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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

BEQUEST 
OF 

Professor 
Howard  Moise 


SIRENICA 


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Earn  8£  <f>v\ov  iv  av6p<*)Troi(ri  /xaTaidraTOPy 
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M.€Ta/JL(Jbpia  drjpetiwv  dicpdrrois  PKirlaiv. 

Pindar,  Pythian,  iii.  20. 


SIRENICA 

BY  W.  COMPTON  LEITH 
WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION  BY 
WILLIAM     MARION     REEDY 


Portland  Maine  :   Printed  for  Thomas  Bird  Mosher 

and  published  by  him  at  45  Exchange  Street 

MDCCCCXV 


THE   IVORY   GATE 


Sunt  geminae  Somni  portae  :  quarum  altera  fertur 
Cornea;  qua  veris  facilis  datur  exitus  umbris: 
Altera  candenti  perfecta  nitens  elephanto  ; 
Sed  falsa  ad  coelum  mittunt  insomnia  Manes. 

VIRGIL. 


TJZHEN,  loved  by  poet  and  painter 

The  sunrise  fills  the  sky, 
When  night's  gold  urns  grow  fainter, 

And  in  depths  of  amber  die  — 
When  the  morn-breeze  stirs  the  curtain, 

Bearing  an  odorous  freight  — 
Then  visions  strange,  uncertain, 
Pour  thick  through  the  Ivory  Gate. 


THE    IVORY    GATE 


// 

Then  the  oars  of  Ithaca  dip  so 

Silently  into  the  sea, 
That  they  wake  not  sad  Calypso  — 

And  the  Hero  wanders  free : 
He  breasts  the  ocean-furrows, 

At  war  with  the  words  of  Fate- 
And  the  blue  tide's  low  susurrus 

Comes  up  to  the  Ivory  Gate. 


Ill 

Or,  clad  in  the  hide  of  leopard, 

'Mid  Ida' s  freshest  dews, 
Paris,  the  Teucrian  shepherd, 

His  sweet  CEnone  woos  : 
On  the  thought  of  her  coming  bridal 

Unuttered  joy  doth  wait  — 
While  the  tune  of  the  false  one's  idyl 

Rings  soft  through  the  Ivory  Gate. 


THE    IVORY    GATE 


IV 

Or  down  from  green  Helvellyn 

The  roar  of  streams  I  hear, 
And  the  lazy  sail  is  swelling 

To  the  winds  of  Windermere : 
That  girl  with  the  rustic  bodice 

'Mid  the  ferry's  laughing  freight 
Is  as  fair  as  any  goddess 

Who  sweeps  through  the  Ivory  Gate. 


Ah,  the  vision  of  dawn  is  leisure  — 

But  the  truth  of  day  is  toil : 
And  we  pass  from  dreams  of  pleasure 

To  the  world's  unstayed  turmoil. 
Perchance,  beyond  the  river 

Which  guards  the  realms  of  Fate, 
Our  spirits  may  dwell  for  ever 

'Mong  dreams  of  the  Ivory  Gate. 

MORTIMER   COLLINS. 


INTRODUCTION 


INTRODUCTION 


£^-|  f"^^  HIS  is  the  book  of  everybody  — 
this  "  Sirenica."  Some  of  the  self- 
imagined  elect  may  think  it  is  for 
them  alone.  They  are  wrong, 
thank  God.  For  here,  in  this  volume  of  stately, 
sonorous,  rhythmic,  colorful  prose  is  the 
explanation  of  each  man  to  himself.  He  knows 
that  he  is  at  war  with  himself,  he  grieves  at 
or  girds  at  some  unsootheable  discontent.  This 
book  tells  him  that  he  is  the  battle-field  of  a 
Holy  War,  that  his  discontent  is  divine. 

For  that  song  the  Sirens  sang  is  ringing  in 
every  human  heart.  It  is  a  song  of  insup- 
pressible  yearning  over  and  of  protest  against 
all  boundaries.  It  is  a  song  against  the  law 
of  moderation,  against  askesis.  From  "  beyond 
the  flaming  ramparts  of  the  world  "  it  comes, 
and   from    the    Abyss.     It   summons   to  the 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

heights  and  to  the  depths  with  a  melody  of 
ineluctable  allure.  Most  are  too  faint  to  arise 
and  follow  but  they  listen  in  secret.  Others 
answer  the  call  and  go  to  glory  or  to  doom. 
Its  music  is  a  madness  or  a  great  sanity.  It 
makes  the  genius  or  the  crank. 

For  their  own  ends  sacerdotalists  have  main- 
tained the  Sirens*  song  is  a  myth  of  fleshly 
lust.  They  lie.  The  song  goes  on  singing 
when  fleshly  lust  is  done.  How  else  should 
it  have  moved  durus  Ulixes  newly  escaped 
from  Circe's  spell  ?  No :  the  call  is  more 
than  that ;  it  is  a  call  away  from  the  tyranny 
of  reason,  the  superstition  of  order,  the  idolatry 
of  law,  the  satisfaction  of  the  here  and  now. 
Verily  it  is  one  with  the  voice  of  Pan. 

The  Sirens  are  those  who  voice  to  us  the 
eternal  appeal  of  Romance.  They  bid  us 
"  over  the  hills  and  far  away."  They  chant 
the  "  Marsellaise  "  of  an  eternally  unconquer- 
able Revolution.  They  give  the  marching 
tune  for  every  uprising  against  the  archons  of 
art,  religion,  philosophy,  science,  government. 
To  its  strain  go  forth  ever  and  forever  the  world- 


INTRODUCTION 


shapers,  the  world-forsakers,  the  explorers  of 
the  vast  inane,  the  adventurers  in  every  realm 
of  thought  and  action.  Some  come  back  with 
splendid  spoil  of  their  wild  essay ;  others  are 
lost  in  defeat.  Within  man's  soul  and  without, 
in  all  far,  deep,  forbidden  places  they  range 
upon  their  quest.  They  seek  the  unknowable. 
They  would  express  the  inexpressible.  In 
their  hearts  are  the  restlessness  of  the  sea, 
the  hues  of  dawns  and  sunsets,  the  music  of 
the  spheres,  the  appeal  of  the  eyes  of  birds 
and  beasts.  They  would  measure  the  measure- 
less. They  seek  the  end  —  rest.  Rest  in  the 
accomplishment  of  all  knowledge,  the  righting 
of  all  wrong — the  rest  in  perfection. 

For  no  man  is  content  within  life's  limita- 
tions— no  one.  Each  man  looks  upon  the 
best  he  knows  and  scorns  it  to  seek  the 
imagined  better  thing.  Into  his  work  he  puts 
as  much  as  possible  of  that  desired  imagined 
better  thing.  He  is  fullest  awake  when  he  is 
most  possessed  by  that  dream  of  the  beyond. 
His  best  expression  of  himself  is  in  escape 
from  himself.     When   clearest   he  hears  the 


XIV 


INTRODUCTION 


Sirens'  song  he  is  lost  in  ecstacy  as  he  visions 
an  end,  which  endlessly  moves  on.  He  may 
be  a  discoverer  in  science,  a  founder  of  a  new 
creed,  a  poet,  a  reformer,  a  stormer  of  all  the 
impregnable  mysteries.  He  may  be  an  humble 
toiler  at  life's  daily  tasks.  He  would  be 
nothing  and  do  nothing  but  for  his  outreach 
somehow  to  the  unattainable.  Every  man 
dreams  his  dream  of  a  better  world  than  he 
knows.  It  is  a  dream  of  some  form  of  con- 
tentment not  to  be  known  here.  And  as  all 
laws,  cults,  institutions  are  framed  to  forbid 
his  seeking  further  than  what  the  fathers  have 
told  us,  every  man  is  an  anarchist  as  to  some 
or  many  forms  taken  by  authority.  If  this 
were  not  true,  life  would  stagnate,  progress 
would  cease. 

It  is  Romance  that  keeps  the  world  alive 
and  going.  It  is  Romance  that  perpetually 
refreshes  the  springs  of  art.  As  imagination 
Romance  opens  up  new  worlds,  new  universes 
to  science.  In  politics  it  is  the  Romanticists 
who  strike  out  new  enlargements  of  liberty. 
In  philosophy  the  Romanticists  eternally  pre- 


INTRODUCTION 


vail  because  life  will  not  be  confined  in  a 
system.  The  wonder  of  the  world,  its  ever 
unfolding  magic  and  mystery,  the  limitlessness 
of  the  possibilities  of  the  human  spirit  working 
on  all  the  materialities  of  environment,  —  this 
is  the  Romance  which  no  glacial  age  of  the 
Classic  can  ever  chill  into  the  peace  of  death. 
And  wonder  seeks  the  source  of  Beauty  and 
of  Truth.  The  Sirens'  song  is  the  mighty 
invitation  to  the  quest,  and  to  its  key  every 
spirit  is  attuned  subtly,  responding  in  harmonic 
vibrations  however  faint  or  strong. 

So  I  read  "  Sirenica  "  and  put  but  palely  its 
message  of  verbal  splendor.  For  its  language 
is  of  a  multitudinous  music.  It  is  a  book  of 
symphonies  and  pictures.  It  is  all  a  flowing 
stream  of  tints  and  tones  of  the  scales  of  sound 
and  color.  Upon  its  bosom  floats  every  flower 
of  perfect  speech.  Innumerable  allusions, 
nuances  of  literary  echo,  brave,  translunary 
soarings  of  imagination,  the  spoil  of  a  life  of 
reading  of  the  best  that  has  been  said  or  writ- 
ten—  all  these  are  blended  into  a  style  that 
has  the  lull  of  the  lotus  which  evokes  in  the 


INTRODUCTION 


reader,  vision.  You  do  not,  under  the  spell, 
so  much  follow  the  argument  of  a  thesis  as 
suffer  a  translation  into  a  condition  of  clair- 
voyance and  clairaudience  wherein  are  seen 
and  heard  in  the  far  outer  spaces  the  vanished 
idealists  of  all  time,  or  victors  or  vanquished, 
choiring  with  the  Sirens  the  song  of  worship 
around  an  inviolable  shrine  which  holds  the 
sacred  bread,  unattainable  forever,  to  still  the 
hunger  of  the  human  heart. 

WILLIAM    MARION    REEDY 


SIRENICA 


SIRENICA 


i 


WHEN  the  Emperor  Tibe- 
rius inquired  of  the  gram- 
marian what  songs  the 
Sirens  sang,  he  asked  to 
prove  his  wit  and  was  gratified  when  no  man 
answered.  Yet  there  may  have  been  those 
present  at  his  audience  who,  questioned  in  the 
same  way,  had  not  pretended  ignorance,  but 
dared  to  hazard  their  wide  solution.  For  the 
song  is  immortal;  the  times  have  been  rare 
throughout  the  ages  in  which  it  has  been  inter- 
mitted, and  they  were  yet  beyond  experience 
in  the  days  of  the  second  Caesar.  The  Sirens 
might  have  been  heard  then,  as  they  may  now 
be  heard ;  while  the  Emperor  spoke,  many  a 
Roman  stood  fast  in  their  toils,  as  in  our 
midst  at  this  hour  their  victims  are  a  great 


"What 

song  the 

Sirens 

sang." 


SIRENIC A 


"What 

song  the 

Sirens 

sang." 


multitude.  The  Sirens  are  no  more  dead  than 
Pan,  though,  like  him,  they  have  sometimes 
rested  from  their  work  when  the  winds  have 
blown  furiously,  and  the  sails  left  the  sea,  and 
the  ploughs  lain  rusting.  When  the  world 
has  grown  barbarous  or  too  violent  for  their 
music,  they  have  withdrawn  awhile  into  the 
recesses  of  their  sea-caverns,  as  he  into  the 
unvisited  clefts  of  mountains;  but  they  have 
never  renounced  their  art,  or  wholly  aban- 
doned their  assigned  part  in  human  tragedy ; 
they  are  still  the  fair-speaking  handmaidens 
of  Fate,  who  may  never  release  them  from  her 
service.  Nor  have  they  ever  been  overcome 
by  gods  or  men ;  it  is  not  true  that  they  flung 
themselves  into  the  sea  in  despite,  or  that 
they  were  changed  into  mute  rocks  because 
a  single  adventurer  went  safely  by  them ;  it  is 
not  true  that  the  Muses  silenced  them  for  all 
time  by  the  chance  of  a  single  victory.  They 
live  on,  careless  of  these  tales.  They  still 
sing  their  ancient  melody,  nor  is  there  any 
fear  but  that  the  music  which  survived  the 
Roman  Empire  will  outlast  our  governments, 


SIRENICA 


audible  in  a  new  time  beyond  the  prospect  of 
our  chronology.  And  if  our  life  were  less 
confused  by  the  sounding  tides  of  action,  in 
its  clamour  unpropitious  to  the  fine  attention 
of  the  soul,  we  might  more  often  hear  to  our 
peril  such  words  as  those  which  made  the 
hero  Odysseus  fear.  For  we  stand  upon  a 
greater  height  of  years  than  those  who  have 
lived  before  us;  were  there  more  lulls  and 
pauses  in  the  rumour  of  the  world,  we  might 
catch  echoes  out  of  a  vaster  distance,  and 
know  a  wider  trouble  than  they. 

A  prince,  long  ages  ago,  discovered  the 
tenour  of  the  song;  but  being  a  god's  off- 
spring, he  was  saved  by  a  miracle  from  the 
fated  consequence,  and  lived  to  understand 
the  averted  danger.  He  it  was  who  first  con- 
cealed the  truth,  fearing  for  the  people's 
happiness ;  it  was  from  him  that  all  later 
rulers  learned  to  defame  the  singers,  in  order 
that  men,  deeming  them  too  base  for  more 
than  the  lower  love  or  fear,  might  give  small 
heed,  and  be  held  more  readily  out  of  earshot. 
He  set  them  down  as  professed  temptresses ; 


"What 

song  the 

Sirens 

sang." 


The  Sirens 

and 
Odysseus. 


SIRENIC A 


The  Sirens 

and 
Odysseus. 


their  names  were  made  a  byword  for  that 
which  of  all  frailties  was  most  incongruous 
with  their  nature.  Their  song,  it  was  said, 
was  but  a  common  lure  for  mariners,  the  music 
of  concupiscence,  the  voice  of  the  strange 
woman  wilful  in  the  love  of  evil.  And  one 
age  taking  up  the  cry  from  the  other,  this  old 
injustice  came  down  the  centuries  and  was  at 
last  established  almost  beyond  power  of  revo- 
cation. It  was  made  legendary,  and  legend 
outlives  truth ;  the  world  has  a  deep  love  for 
its  old  traditions,  and  often  the  falsest  are  the 
most  faithfully  defended.  The  mischief  began 
with  the  tales  of  Argonauts  and  heroes  sailing 
back  from  Troy,  tales  so  ancient  and  so  far- 
repeated  that  the  names  which  they  once 
discredited  never  lost  the  stain.  Century 
after  century,  the  Sirens  were  re-condemned 
as  idle  daughters  of  music ;  long  repetition 
caused  the  unbelievable  thing  to  be  believed 
as  an  article  of  unquestioned  faith.  This  was 
a  natural  simplicity  in  the  darker  ages ;  it  is 
preposterous  in  our  own.  For  what  but 
inveterate  blind  habit  should  make  us  hold  so 


SIRENICA 


long  that  demi-goddesses  and  rivals  of  the 
Muses  had  nothing  more  to  sing  than  long- 
shore ballads  or  chants  for  sailors'  ears  ? 
Who  may  in  his  heart  suppose  that  against 
such  lures  as  this  Odysseus  stood  defenceless, 
the  hero  of  a  life  more  various  in  experience 
than  any  lived  upon  the  earth  before  his  day  ? 
Who,  once  reflecting  upon  the  absurd  belief, 
shall  accept  the  story  that  such  a  man  dared 
not  trust  his  soul — his  mighty  soul — within 
the  range  of  a  cheap  seduction,  or  that  his 
limbs — his  mighty  limbs — trembled  beneath 
him  at  a  sound,  and  were  relaxed  by  a  com- 
mon blandishment?  It  is  to  ask  too  much; 
it  is  to  overstrain  credulity.  What  charm  had 
lust  or  indolence  for  one  sated  betimes  with 
the  delicate  arts  of  Circe  ?  From  a  surfeit  of 
the  easier  pleasures  he  was  but  newly  fled ; 
he  had  drunk  the  dregs  of  that  cup,  and  in 
contrition  gnawed  the  shards  of  it.  And 
now,  when  at  last  he  was  away  upon  the  main, 
breathing  a  large  air  as  the  sail  drew  full,  and 
the  keel  hissed  like  a  share  through  the  long 
sea-furrows,  should  he  now  stay  for  a  languid 


The  Sirens 

and 
Odysseus. 


SIRENIC A 


The  Sirens 

and 
Odysseus. 


music,  now  re-invoke  that  debasing  servitude  ? 
His  prow  was  towards  Ithaca ;  night  after 
night  as  he  leaned  upon  the  steering-oar  and 
laid  his  course  for  home,  it  was  no  amorous 
vision  that  he  saw,  but  the  white  walls  of  his 
father's  house,  and  the  brows  of  Penelope 
lightened  from  the  burden  of  untaken  Troy. 
At  such  a  time  of  all  others  in  his  life,  you  are 
to  suppose  the  old  lures  once  more  succeed- 
ing, the  old  cup,  so  over-honeyed  and  staled 
upon  the  sense,  more  potent  than  in  volup- 
tuous hours.  For  such  rewards  as  these  you 
are  to  think  the  wisest  hero  who  followed 
Agamemnon  to  war  must  so  misdoubt  his 
strength  that  he  dare  not  trust  his  resolved 
will  as  they  passed  the  perilous  shore,  but  the 
crew  must  lash  him  to  the  mast  lest  he  plunge 
from  the  home-bound  ship  to  blunder  upon  a 
young  man's  ruin.  This,  surely,  is  a  mad  tale, 
and  for  no  serious  acceptance.  Whatever  else 
be  charged  against  Odysseus,  this  at  least 
shall  never  be  believed.  That  he  is  wronged 
even  in  the  Homeric  song  is  suggested  by 
another  legend.     When   Argo  sailed  by  the 


SIRENIC A 


Sirens'  coast,  and,  high  on  the  poop,  Orpheus 
drowned  their  music  with  his  own,  there  rowed 
among  the  crew  one  Butes,  priest  of  Athena, 
goddess,  let  it  be  recalled,  of  wisdom  and 
passionless  restraint.  Yet  the  story  goes  that 
it  was  this  man  and  none  other  of  the  Argo- 
nauts who  yielded  to  the  melody,  and  diving 
into  the  sea,  swam  shorewards  without  a 
thought  for  past  repute  or  immediate  danger. 
Then,  strange  to  tell,  Athena  let  him  swim  to 
his  doom  ;  but  Aphrodite  interferred,  and  bore 
him  off  to  Lilybaeum.  Now,  if  the  Sirens 
were  such  as  common  opinion  held  them,  why 
was  it  that  the  priest  of  the  maiden  goddess 
was  first  to  yield  ?  And  why  should  Aphrodite 
save  him,  who,  if  there  were  any  truth  in 
rumour,  should  rather  have  wafted  him  to 
land,  exulting  in  his  discomfiture  ?  Is  it  not 
plain  that  the  Sirens  were  in  truth  no 
votaresses  of  hers,  and  that  their  allurements 
were  so  little  after  her  heart  that  she  was  at 
exceeding  pains  to  thwart  them  ?  Moreover, 
a  third  story  tells  that  the  Sirens  were  virginal 
of   inclination,    and,    since    this   quality   was 


The  Sirens 

and 
Odysseus. 


SIRENICA 


The  Sirens 

and 
Romance. 


judged   a   fault  in  them,  were  punished  by 
being  stripped  of  their  wings. 

It  is  clear,  then,  that  the  epic  itself  is  unjust 
to  the  Sirens  and  to  him  who  was  appointed 
to  hear  out  their  song.  It  brought  them  alike 
down  to  the  baseness  of  common  and  weak 
mortals,  whereas  they  were  of  a  nobler  cast, 
the  men  heroic,  the  singers  half  divine.  If 
the  music  was  indeed  perilous  for  the  hero's 
understanding,  it  must  have  sounded  some 
other  note  of  danger,  a  note  grave  and  exalted, 
befitting  one  of  so  high  an  ancestry.  For 
Odysseus  was  of  the  race  of  Sisyphus ;  in  his 
veins  flowed  the  blood  of  the  Attempter  who 
might  never  fulfil.  What  voice,  then,  should 
speak  with  irresistible  appeal  to  the  scion  of 
such  a  stock,  to  one  versed  so  deeply  in  the 
world?  Should  it  be  any  idle  melody  you 
will,  a  soft  enticement,  a  sensual  promise? 
Or  should  it  rather  be  a  call  to  knowledge 
wider  and  ever  again  more  wide,  the  reaching 
out  of  the  soul  after  things  beyond  all  past 
essay  ?  None  shall  doubt  the  answer  who 
remember  that  fated  lineage ;    it  was  a  call 


SIRENIC A 


not  to  ease  or  vain  delights,  but  to  the  unde- 
sisting  infinite  adventure.  This  and  this  only 
could  have  made  Odysseus  fear  in  the  fair 
hour  of  his  return,  this  only  could  have 
brought  him  to  endure  the  cords  upon  his 
limbs ;  this  alone  was  so  hard  to  disobey  that 
he  might  not  trust  himself  to  stand  unbound 
when  it  sounded  over  the  waters  in  the  hot 
Apulian  noon.  In  the  soul  of  Laertes'  son 
there  was  but  one  place  vulnerable,  and  that 
the  voice  of  the  Sirens  found,  for  the  very 
cause  that  they  sang  no  voluptuous  song  but 
a  chant  of  battle,  the  high  music  of  sedition 
which  lifts  up  the  heart,  which  takes  the  savour 
from  the  thing  which  is  here  and  now,  and 
the  peace  from  tame  contentment.  It  was 
that  music  at  whose  first  note  the  soul  is 
roused  against  the  prescribed  and  sanctioned, 
impatient  of  the  ordered  life  and  the  arranged 
happiness,  mutinous  against  the  care  which 
would  shield  grown  men  from  peril  of  man- 
hood. It  was  the  music  which  awakens  to  a 
glory  of  arduous  dreams.  It  was  the  signal 
which    suddenly  disgusts  the   soul  with  the 


The  Sirens 

and 
Romance. 


SIRENIC A 


The  Sirens 

and 
Romance. 


thing  which  is  all  feasible  or  wholly  under- 
stood, the  summons  which  calls  away  from 
the  possessed  and  measurable  land  into  the 
uncharted  kingdom  of  the  Vague.  For  the 
Sirens  mean  Romance.  They  awaken  that 
restive  yearning  within  the  heart  which  practi- 
cal wisdom  strives  to  quell.  They  disenchant 
from  the  governable  life  with  its  gregarious 
ease  and  communicable  satisfactions.  They 
stand  against  the  dictated  sentiment  and  the 
admiration  ruled  by  norm ;  they  mock  at  hap- 
piness, the  reward  of  all  these  things.  But 
they  incite  to  the  sole  adventure  ;  they  promise 
a  reward  remote  from  the  smiling  continent  of 
pleasures,  isled  in  pain,  attained  and  lost 
alone.  They  promise  joy,  the  stress  and 
puissance,  which  carries  the  soul  out  to  the 
great  verges  and  holds  her  a-swoon  in  ecstasies 
of  incredible  life.  When  their  song  sounds, 
the  chase  is  up  after  the  quarry  which  is  not 
overtaken,  and  all  who  follow  come  again 
changed  men.  They  have  bestridden  wild 
steeds  and  will  lead  sumpter-mules  no  longer ; 
they  will  go  absorbed  and  expectant  hence- 


SIRENIC A 


i3 


forth,  seeking  nothing  but  the  return  of  the 
sign.  They  will  refrain  from  fellowship,  for 
it  impedes ;  garment  frays  with  garment,  but 
not  soul  with  soul.  What  profit  has  any  State 
of  these,  who  give  no  thanks  for  its  benefits 
and  have  no  regard  for  its  laws ;  who  dwell  in 
the  safe  walls  and  dream  perverse  of  some 
Mount  in  Araby ;  who  eat  of  the  joy-leaf  and 
see  all  things  transformed  before  them,  trans- 
formed themselves  and  witched  away  from 
kinship ;  who  in  the  throng  of  near  affections 
care  only  for  the  love  which  is  far  ?  What 
loyal  service  shall  the  ruler  hope  of  these, 
who  live  only  for  the  day  of  issue  beyond  his 
marches,  wild  beings,  starting  away  under  the 
hand  of  kindness  ?  These  are  unprofitable 
souls  upon  every  scale  of  his  estimation,  lives 
unexpressed,  instruments  unplayed,  symbols 
undeciphered.  Shall  he  force  these  into  his 
fold  ?  Stay  the  sparks  of  the  blown  fire ; 
bind  the  flakes  of  the  frozen  snow. 

What  things,  then,  were  the  Sirens  wont  to 
sing,  when  the  ship  passed  with  glistening 
oars,  and  the  ear  of  a  hero  was  open  to  the 


The  Sirens 

and 
Romance. 


The  song 
of  the 
Sirens. 


14 


SIRENIC A 


The  song 
of  the 
Sirens. 


song?  Things  fathomless,  things  aestuant; 
things  lost  in  the  vast  perplexities  of  light. 
They  sang  the  splendid  wells  of  colour,  that 
tremble  and  change  in  their  deeps,  the  blue  at 
the  heart  of  great  sapphires,  the  crimson  in 
the  poppy's  cup  at  twilight,  the  wine  of  lonely 
isles.  They  praised  the  tongue  of  the  beacons 
lapping  at  the  darkness,  as  the  lit  pines  of 
Ida  above  Troy  fallen,  the  path  of  the  moon 
over  the  sea,  and  the  world's  end,  and  the 
voids  beyond  the  world.  They  sang  of  the 
unascended  heights,  of  mountains  indignant 
of  tamed  life  from  the  beginning  of  remem- 
brance, of  the  beauty  of  lithe  beasts  that  range 
free  over  the  earth,  the  fawn  bounding  above 
the  thicket,  the  panther  instant  upon  the  prey. 
Of  the  eagle  in  the  height  they  sang,  and  the 
rhythm  of  wings  in  the  suave  air;  of  divine 
unguarded  spaces  and  the  pure  zones  of  star- 
light. Their  song  was  also  of  tumultuous 
things,  of  the  tempests  sounding  in  the  gorges, 
and  of  the  wind  upon  the  neck  of  the  moan- 
ing forest.  Then,  fierce  for  men's  deliverance, 
they  praised  the  impassioned  life,  the  forth- 


SIRENICA 


!5 


going  of  the  wild  will  on  its  course,  the  tracts 
of  infinity  overgone.  In  quick  notes  of  chal- 
lenge, or  lingering  notes  of  tenderness,  they 
awakened  yearnings  vast  as  a  god's  desire. 
They  sang  of  slaveries  redeemed,  and  brave 
revolts,  and  fate  confronted  in  the  high  splen- 
dour of  disdain.  They  sang  of  all  that  is 
above  fulfilment  and  beyond  clear  vision ;  of 
the  immeasurable,  the  uncontained,  the  half- 
imagined  ;  of  that  which  is  touched  but  never 
held,  implored  but  unpossessed ;  of  things 
supreme  and  speeding  in  the  vanward  of  time. 
Then  they  sang  the  vileness  of  all  who  live 
contented  upon  an  alms,  and  are  at  ease  in 
bonds,  the  slaves  whose  servitude  is  made 
sweet  by  habit.  They  sang  of  dulled  wits 
cheated  of  their  birthright,  of  fancies  wilfully 
pent,  while  the  clouds  race  free  under  the 
moon  or  are  flung  upon  the  red  pyre  when  the 
evening  ends  the  rain.  On  the  grey  life  they 
chanted  scorn,  with  its  rounded  tasks,  its 
hopes  too  soon  fordone,  its  unresisted  nonage. 
With  a  rising  fury  of  contempt  they  mocked 
the    mind    of    dulcet    thoughts ;    the    spirit 


The  song 
of  the 
Sirens. 


i6 


SIRENIC A 


The  song 
of  the 
Sirens. 


engrossed  in  mean  things  weighed  and  par- 
celled;  they  spurned  its  thin  sobrieties,  its 
misdevotions,  its  lust  after  the  little  scantlings 
of  achievement.  As  the  gadfly  goaded  Io,  so 
they  stung  the  slave  of  usage  over  the  lands 
and  fords  of  dream  ;  they  mocked  him  as  he 
stumbled  with  eyes  bent  earthward,  blind  as 
the  animals  that  graze  bestial  years  away. 
They  flouted  him  in  his  self-complacence  with 
taunts  intolerable  upon  the  lips  of  women, 
and  words  like  scorching  fire.  Whatsoever  is 
of  ease  or  acquiescence  ;  whatsoever  imprisons 
the  soul  within  the  walls  of  swept  and  tended 
places;  whatsoever  hinders,  or  fences,  or 
impounds  the  life  created  for  emprise — all 
this  they  held  to  shame  in  a  glow  of  scorn, 
lambent  over  it  as  the  midnight  lightning 
above  the  farmstead.  And  then  they  mocked 
the  hero  Odysseus  hastening  home  like  a 
hungry  ploughman  from  the  fields,  or  a  fisher 
from  beneath  the  headland,  tired  by  the 
labours  of  a  day,  while  the  marvellous  world 
lay  yet  unknown  before  him,  and  the  immeas- 
urable Ocean,  and  the  promise  of  the  Fortunate 


SIRENICA 


*1 


Isles.  They  made  him  small  in  his  own 
sight ;  they  proved  him  base  and  fallen ;  they 
foretold  to  him  in  his  grey  hairs,  if  he  refused 
them  now,  compunctions  beyond  mortal  suf- 
fering and  the  besieging  terrors  of  remorse. 
And  at  the  last,  wild  with  the  passion  of 
transcendent  things  and  the  hatred  of  all  the 
bounds  that  infringe  upon  the  soul,  they  grew 
contemptuous  of  the  very  gods,  who  at  ease 
upon  Olympus,  forgot  the  dream  of  greater 
heights,  and  the  menace  of  the  unslumbering 
Titan,  worthier  than  they  of  heaven. 


The  song 
of  the 
Sirens. 


II 

Such  was  the  music  of  the  Sirens  in  the 
youth  of  the  world,  and  so  it  still  sounds,  in 
new  languages  and  under  new  heavens,  seduc- 
ing from  content  in  the  still  noons  of  happiness 
to  the  love  of  flaring  dawns  and  tremendous 
majesties  of  evening ;  leading  astray,  but  along 
the  mountains ;  darkening  life,  but  with 
immortal  shadows.  It  never  wrought  man 
contemptible  wrong ;  but  it  encircles  him  with 
fatal  toils  and  brings  him  hourly  into   peril. 


The 

answer 

of  the 

Greeks. 


i8 


SIRENICA 


The 

answer 
of  the 
Greeks. 


Of  all  who  in  all  ages  have  sought  to  avert  the 
insidious  danger,  the  rulers  of  the  Athenians 
had  clearest  vision  of  its  scope  and  compass. 
They  showed  the  one  imperfect  way  of  safety 
free  to  men,  the  measured  classic  way  which 
alone  in  part  avoids  the  malady  of  unrest. 
Many  and  great  services  they  rendered  men, 
but  of  all  these  their  war  with  the  Sirens  is 
the  highest.  It  is  their  other  Persian  war, 
unchronicled,  unsung,  yet  no  less  momentous 
to  the  afterworld  than  the  legendary  struggle 
with  the  Great  King.  How  mighty  are  those 
Sirens  whom  even  Hellas  could  not  conquer ; 
how  great  was  the  soul  of  Hellas,  though  she 
might  never  quite  prevail !  For  Athens  erred 
by  very  excess  of  brilliance  ;  she  would  discuss 
no  terms  and  make  no  composition,  though  in 
compromise  lay  the  one  chance  of  a  happy 
issue.  She  dreamed  in  her  pride  that  she 
might  wholly  crush  an  immortal  enemy;  as 
well  might  she  have  sought  to  ostracise  the 
winds  of  heaven.  She  fought  with  a  fine 
valiance,  and  refused  no  challenge.  But  she 
fell  into  many  an  ambush  which  a  slower  wit 


SIRENIC A 


*9 


would  have  escaped;  where  the  Boeotian 
would  have  drawn  a  battle  the  Athenian  lost 
it.  At  last  she  wearied  ;  and  with  exhaustion 
grew  intolerance.  All  must  accept  her  law  of 
measure :  to  the  barathron  with  the  uncon- 
forming spirit ;  let  none  speak  of  the  forbidden 
thing.  Away  with  all  that  might  reveal  the 
Sirens'  power.  Away  with  the  memory  of 
Odysseus ;  or  if  that  name  were  too  dear  to 
be  forgotten,  let  it  be  defamed  and  hatefully 
remembered.  Let  Sophocles  lead  on  the 
deceiver  of  Philoctetes ;  let  Euripedes  pre- 
sent the  devourer  of  widows'  houses ;  let 
there  remain  to  after  generations  a  legend  of 
the  hard  Hellenic  Sadducee,  durus  Ulixes> 
"Ulysses  wise  and  base,"  shameless  of  all 
shames  to  achieve  an  argument  or  carry  a  merci- 
less design.  Exaggerating  thus,  the  nature 
which  was  to  serve  cool  reason  abjured  it; 
the  instrument  of  measure  was  taught  to  serve 
excess ;  and  temperance,  the  most  classic  of 
the  virtues,  was  crowded  from  the  classic  mind. 
The  world  should  pursue  happiness  in  sun- 
light, composed  to  ordered  days  in  the  worship 


The 
answer 
of  the 
Greeks. 


SIRENIC A 


The 
answer 
of  the 
Greeks. 


of  the  Grace  Aglaia.  It  should  create  forms 
of  clearest  contour;  it  should  abide  in  a 
knowledge  succinct  and  fixed  in  a  clean 
circumference ;  man  should  rule  his  way  by 
reason  only,  persuaded  to  pursue  that  alone 
which  might  be  all  seen,  to  handle  that 
alone  which  might  be  wholly  done.  The  arch 
achievement,  the  absolute  sight,  these  availed, 
and  beyond  these  nothing.  All  that  was 
ungoverned  and  impulsive  in  his  nature 
should  be  reprobate  as  a  barbarian  violence. 
Emotion  should  be  the  unclean  thing;  thoughts 
clouded  or  suffused  with  passion  no  thoughts 
more,  but  the  draff  of  idle  dreams.  Well,  it 
was  trenchant  war,  but  fought  upon  the  pure 
gospel  of  excess  ;  the  great  Greek  rule  "  nothing 
too  much  "  was  belied  at  every  stage  of  this 
strategy ;  consistency  was  saved,  but  the  sense 
of  humour  sacrificed.  For  happiness  was  now 
defined  for  Hellenes  as  "virtuous  use  of  the 
intellectual  energies,"  and  so  deep  in  her 
loved  system  was  Athens  lost,  that  she  heard 
the  chill  words  as  though  they  fell  from 
Hermes'  lips  or  rustled  to  her  from  the  oak 


SIRENIC A 


leaves  of  Dodona.  All  passion  was  cast  into 
one  gulf  with  the  banned  abstraction  Matter, 
and  for  the  same  offence:  it  interfered  with 
logic ;  it  blurred  the  clear  lines  of  geometric 
fancy.  But  though  her  scheme  of  things  was 
drawn  with  her  finest  art,  it  was  yet  a  world 
in  diagram,  as  like  reality  as  the  dead  map  to 
the  living  landscape.  Athens  the  sane  was 
grown  fantastic ;  Athens  the  hardy  wrapped 
herself  against  the  zephyr.  She  who  once 
went  careless  in  the  sun,  now  set  up  awnings 
to  keep  out  starlight. 

The  Sirens  rejoiced,  perceiving  her  advance 
along  this  false  way ;  the  wilfulness  of  this 
Amazon  spared  them  terms  which  her  genius 
had  else  extorted.  Her  logic  was  impossibly 
consistent  for  this  earth  of  ours  ;  it  overreached 
its  aim  by  sheer  supereminence ;  it  lacked  the 
human  touch,  and  could  not  suffice  for  men. 
It  was  unnatural,  and  Nature  herself  arose 
against  it.  For  in  all  men  there  stirs  at 
periods  and  in  mysterious  seasons  a  power 
intractable  to  precepts,  and  primordial  in  the 
soul.     That  power  must  out,  though  dialectic 


The 

answer 

of  the 

Greeks. 


Ostracis- 
ing the 
winds. 


22 


SIRENICA 


Ostracis- 
ing the 
winds. 


go  down  in  the  rush  of  it;  who  stifles  it  or 
denies,  though  he  had  taken  the  Great  King 
by  the  beard,  should  surely  be  humbled  for 
his  temerity.  For  it  is  not  given  that  it  may 
be  disowned,  or  sundered  from  thought  as  a 
thing  of  lesser  birth.  It  is  twin-born  and  of 
the  same  nobility ;  if  the  right  of  kinship  be 
denied,  it  will  burst  forth  alone,  an  ungovern- 
able flame,  and  ill  befall  him  who  is  found 
then  upon  its  fiery  way.  What  more  ironic 
stroke  has  Fate  delivered  than  this,  that 
Athens,  preaching  reason,  should  have  declined 
to  prejudice ;  that  the  seed  which  for  sterility 
she  had  aimed  at  the  ox's  horn,  should  fall 
beyond  the  mark  and  bring  forth  a  hundred- 
fold to  her  confusion.  But  though  she  was  of 
a  finer  grain  than  all  who  had  gone  before  or 
after,  hers  was  the  common  lot  of  preachers 
who  begin  inspired  and  end  indoctrinated ;  a 
bias  turns  them  from  the  right  line  ;  their  best 
disciples  will  not  follow  them.  Alas  the  day 
when  the  Greek  wrested  his  own  judgment ; 
when  this  heaven-sent  moderator  set  himself 
to  out-think  thought,   alembicating  life  until 


SIRENICA 


23 


the  virtue  left  it.  Measure  and  symmetry  and 
restraint  were  brought  into  contempt  by  his 
over-favour;  pet  minions  of  the  mind,  they 
were  awarded  every  prize  and  their  opposites 
every  penalty ;  until,  like  a  set  paradox  of 
Euclid,  the  theorem  of  his  ideal  life  was  too 
absurd  for  sense.  Men  wondered  ;  they  grew 
indignant ;  the  cleverest  and  best  were  drawn 
insensibly  to  examine  that  which  was  so 
anxiously  abused  ;  they  began  to  listen  for  the 
divine  forbidden  music.  Heretics  such  as 
these  orthodoxy  could  not  compel.  Though 
she  warned  and  threatened  in  a  sore  dis- 
pleasure, they  left  the  groves  and  porches  for 
the  seashore,  where  the  horizon  fades  in  mist 
and  the  harsh  contours  are  all  dissolved  away. 
And  there  in  the  end  the  voice  of  the  Sirens 
came  to  them,  stealing  with  the  faint  breeze 
round  the  head  of  Sunium. 

There  had  always  been  intellects  in  Greece 
which  checked  at  the  dogma  of  full  harmony 
in  the  world,  which  could  not  pay  the  official 
price  for  happiness ;  there  were  always  souls  to 
echo   that    lamentation    of    Theognis    which 


Ostracis- 
ing the 
winds. 


Great  mal- 
contents. 


24 


SIRENIC A 


Great  mal- 
contents. 


Sophocles  renewed,  and  Posidippus  raised 
again  in  a  later  age :  "  Not  to  be  born  is  the 
first  boon  of  man ;  and  the  second,  if  born  he 
be,  to  return  with  all  speed  thither  whence 
he  came."  Greek  literature  has  undertones, 
discovered  after  what  centuries  of  deafness, 
which  prove  that  the  shadow  of  the  Infinite 
was  not  to  be  averted  even  from  the  Greek 
soul,  or  the  desire  of  it  kept  dumb  for  ever. 
And  since  this  is  the  greatest  literature  that 
ever  was,  and  vibrant  with  life,  the  keenest  of 
all  lives  that  ever  ran  in  veins,  its  testimony  is 
the  word  of  a  faithful  witness,  and  more  cred- 
ible than  the  cold  assurance  of  the  preachers. 
Philosophers  themselves,  retained  as  advocates 
of  the  defined  and  the  precise,  were  found 
false  to  their  instruction,  and  blessing  that 
which  they  were  called  to  curse.  Plato  in  his 
most  prophetic  dialogues  avows  the  love  of 
Wisdom  a  kind  of  madness,  perceiving  that 
without  a  fusion  and  kindling  of  the  soul, 
reason  has  no  way  into  the  heart  of  truth. 
He  bade  philosophy  touch  the  thyrsus,  but  it 
did  not  wound  her  hand ;  nor  did  it  seem  to 


SIRENICA 


25 


many  that  she  had  been  defiled.  Here  was 
no  small  marvel,  but  there  ensued  a  greater ; 
the  same  confession  came  from  men  forearmed 
against  it  by  yet  narrower  discipline.  It  was 
found  on  the  lips  of  sculptors,  whose  art  more 
than  all  others  guards  a  high  convention,  and 
is  dedicated  from  birth  to  the  law  of  measure. 
It  was  found  on  the  lips  of  Scopas.  Now  this 
is  so  notable  a  thing,  and  so  eminent  a  proof 
of  some  weakness  in  the  Greek  defence,  that 
we  may  fitly  pause  over  it  awhile  and  question 
a  great  shade.  In  the  story  of  art,  there  are 
few  deeds  more  significant  than  his,  who 
forsook,  when  it  seemed  too  strait  for  truth,  a 
tradition  accepted  almost  as  divine.  It  is  hard 
for  us  now  to  conceive  to  the  full  the  courage 
of  the  abandonment ;  we  were  never  bred  up 
under  a  Pheidian  law ;  from  our  infancy  we 
have  inbreathed  romance.  But  then,  in  the 
Hellenic  world,  what  audacity  in  this  defec- 
tion !  Saul  among  the  prophets  was  not 
stranger  than  was  this  sculptor  delivering  the 
message  of  the  Sirens  in  a  world  forbidden  to 
speak  their  names  ;  it  must  have  seemed  to  the 


Great  mal- 
contents. 


26 


SIRENICA 


Great  mal- 
contents. 


lovers  of  the  old  law  that  the  foundations  of 
the  great  art  were  shaken,  and  the  sacred 
stream  driven  backward  upon  its  source.  Yet 
even  we  may  in  some  faint  measure  receive 
the  shock  of  that  apostasy,  confronted  for  the 
first  time  with  a  head  by  Scopas.  For  it 
strikes  the  soul  unawares,  which  looked  for  no 
such  arrow  out  of  night.  The  high  tranquillity 
is  there,  indeed,  but  pierced  through  and 
through ;  it  is  the  face  of  one  adventured 
beyond  his  last  defences,  alone  in  a  darkness, 
ringed  about  with  threatening  sounds.  Here 
is  the  look  which  the  archon's  eye  would  not 
see,  but  which  the  gods  saw  many  a  time, 
when  the  crowds  were  gone  homeward,  and 
the  worshipper  lingered  in  the  precinct  to 
question  his  own  soul  apart.  The  countenance 
of  that  pondering  Medici  is  not  strange  to  us, 
as  he  sits  above  his  tomb  lost  in  the  yet 
insoluble  secret ;  we  know  his  day,  and  the 
mind  which  created  him  in  a  pause  of  con- 
verse with  sibylline  and  prophetic  forms. 
Michelangelo  perceived — his  verse  glooms 
and  flashes  under  the  thought — that  the  desire 


SIRENIC A 


27 


of  things  remote,  let  it  once  pass  into  the 
heart,  becomes  at  once  a  spring  of  joy  and  a 
fire  of  never-ceasing  torment.  All  this  is 
written  in  his  own  face  as  his  contemporaries 
have  left  it,  stern,  visited  by  dreams,  impatient 
of  this  trivial  world ;  it  shines  out  of  eyes 
worn  by  long  perusals  of  the  heights  and 
depths  beyond  common  sight.  But  the  mind 
is  as  it  were  affronted,  when  it  divines  a  like 
foiled  and  ardent  nature  in  the  child  of  an 
earlier  age,  in  a  Hellene,  in  one  who  had 
dreamed  no  terrors  of  the  Doom,  nor  ever 
trembled  in  the  severe  shadows  of  theology. 
The  expression  of  such  a  nature  in  such  an 
art  is  unsanctioned  by  our  canons ;  it  offends 
as  an  utterance  out  of  Soli.  But  in  truth  this 
is  not  so  much  a  lapse  as  a  recovery  and  a 
correction.  And  it  is  the  Sirens'  work;  these 
faces  speak  their  language. 

By  a  peculiar  grace  of  destiny,  Scopas  was 
born  a  Parian ;  the  child's  first  steps  were 
upon  marble.  In  such  an  isle,  if  anywhere  on 
earth,  the  young  Hellene  should  have  grown 
up  in  the  very  spirit  of  the  harmonious  life. 


Great  mal- 
contents. 


Scopas. 


28 


SIRENICA 


Scopas. 


Roaming  the  white  beaches,  or  lying  upon 
some  promontory  above  the  wine-bright  sea, 
he  should  have  gathered  into  his  soul  the 
consenting  gladness  of  all  created  things. 
On  such  a  shore,  if  the  creed  of  harmony 
were  true,  the  memory  of  a  bright  protected 
life  under  the  guidance  of  familiar  gods  should 
have  remained  to  him  unclouded  through  his 
later  life  as  a  birthright  of  happy  fortune. 
Yet  just  this  man  was  chosen  to  prove  Greece 
presumptuous,  and  that  by  the  very  art  on 
which  she  had  most  relied,  the  great  clear  art 
of  Pheidias.  That  the  proof  might  go  out 
into  all  the  Hellenic  world,  he  was  called  from 
his  narrow  isle ;  a  new  spirit  passed  into  him ; 
in  an  unknown  hour  he  was  changed,  and  the 
manner  of  his  thought  transformed.  Upon 
what  paths  he  went,  or  where  the  first  shadow 
fell  upon  him,  history  does  not  tell ;  his  is  a 
life  but  sparsely  chronicled.  But  from  the 
jetsam  and  poor  wreckage  of  his  work,  all  that 
remains  now  to  us  from  his  hand,  we  may 
divine  what  shadows  they  were,  from  what 
deeps  issuing,  into  what  heights  withdrawn. 


SIRENIC A 


29 


These  forms  reflect  the  travail  of  an  unquiet 
spirit  to  which  the  well-preached  harmonies 
were  no  longer  certain.  They  have  lost  the 
poise  of  godlike  life  attained  in  the  earlier 
age;  they  breathe  a  disdain  of  law  and  a 
consciousness  of  high  transgression ;  they 
betray  an  initiation  of  the  soul  which  orthodox 
Hellenic  art  would  fain  have  hidden.  They 
tell  of  sparkling  dangers  and  serene  treacheries 
perceived,  of  an  undertowing  tide  upon  the 
bright  shores  ;  and  if  no  poet  had  ever  revealed 
the  secret  in  anxious  verse,  these  fragments 
alone  would  have  proclaimed  it.  Scopas 
spoke  for  all  those  who  knew  that  they  bore  a 
burden,  and  endured  no  longer  to  be  told  by 
assertive  voices  that  they  dreamed,  and  that 
their  sore  shoulders  were  not  galled.  For  the 
temple  of  Athena  Alea  he  wrought  the  hunt 
of  the  Calydonian  boar,  of  which  there  remain 
but  two  mutilated  heads,  one  of  an  expression 
tense  with  such  ardour  of  distress  as  no  mere 
chase  of  beasts  might  ever  awaken.  He  who 
carved  these  upturned  eyes  and  parted  lips 
was  dreaming  of  other  things  than  feats  of 


Scopas. 


3o 


SIRENICA 


venery,  translating  the  protest  of  his  own  soul 
and  of  many  souls  in  like  affliction ;  while  he 
worked,  his  fancy  was  away  in  the  fields  of 
another  destiny,  where  man  himself  was  at 
bay,  and  the  mort  sounded  over  a  human 
quarry.  The  broken  relief  of  a  charioteer 
from  the  tomb  of  Mausolus,  whether  the  mas- 
ter himself  wrought  it  or  a  disciple,  speaks  in 
the  same  language,  but  in  another  mood. 
This  driver  bending  over  the  chariot-rail  is  the 
champion  in  no  battle  of  which  history  tells; 
he  is  not  one  who  whirls  about  an  arena,  stir- 
ring the  earth  over  a  little  space  for  the  prize 
of  a  cauldron  or  painted  vase.  He  is  beyond 
the  compute  of  things ;  the  present  is  gone 
from  him  ;  his  eye  is  bent  upon  something 
beyond  the  gaps  of  war  or  the  curve  of  the 
course,  or  the  spectators  tier  on  tier  beyond. 
He  searches  another  bourne ;  the  shouts  of  men 
are  distant  to  him  as  the  murmur  of  gnats; 
the  breath  of  pursuing  horses  upon  his  shoulder 
goes  unheeded  as  the  natural  air.  He  is 
beyond  measure  of  space ;  not  in  the  battle 
or  the  concourse,  but  alone  with  himself  like 


SIRENIC A 


31 


a  star  in  immensity,  consumed  with  gathering 
flames  and  careless  of  all  but  an  unseen  goal. 
The  Maenad,  though  known  but  in  an  ancient 
copy,  is  of  the  same  kindred.  She  floats  for- 
ward like  a  billow  that  confronts  the  wind, 
with  head  flung  back  and  tossing  hair,  wavelike 
in  all  her  contours,  a  child  of  the  deep  astray 
upon  the  earth  and  called  by  some  wild  memory 
back  to  ocean.  Wavelike  she  flows  on,  to  be 
broken  on  the  shore  that  no  man  knows.  And 
that  head  of  a  maid  or  goddess  from  Acropolis 
bears  the  like  witness,  though  in  her  the  desire 
of  the  things  beyond  is  held  in  a  supreme 
restraint.  In  the  bloom  of  life  she  gazes 
upward  and  outward,  looking  intently  upon  a 
distance,  as  if,  like  an  Iphigenia  warned,  she 
saw  in  it  some  place  of  deepening  shadows 
towards  which  her  youth  is  driven  for  sacrifice. 
There  is  yearning  in  them,  and  a  half-subdued 
dismay ;  beneath  the  proved  composure,  the 
passionate  hope  for  a  sign  delayed.  Here  is 
a  soul  which  yet  waits  her  hour;  when  the 
sign  glows  upon  the  darkness  she  shall  forsake 
all  to  follow;  wherever  lie  the  way,  on  every 


Scopas. 


32 


SIRENICA 


Scopas.  path  her  feet  shall  be  set  firm,  and  her  heart 
prove  its  valiance.  A  goddess,  but  mortally 
impassioned ;  anxious  in  a  world  unknown, 
marvelling,  doubting,  unserene.  This  virginal 
life  is  not  poised :  it  pulses,  dilating  and  con- 
tracting with  the  heart  it  quickens.  These  lips, 
might  the  soul  be  absolved  of  silence,  would 
tell  you  in  a  strain  of  prophecy,  visions  of  the 
Erythraean  Sibyl,  things  that  reach  back  into 
the  shadow  of  oblivion  and  out  towards  the 
mysteries  of  coming  time.  But  they  are  mute 
to  us  ;  though  we  ask  of  her  a  thousand  times, 
they  shall  not  be  moved.  Has  she  already 
lost,  or  not  yet  attempted  ?  Is  she  mocked 
by  a  disillusion,  or  perplexed  by  some  warning 
of  a  dream  ?  Does  she  doubt  of  a -divine  love, 
or  mislament  an  earthly  passion  ?  Or  having 
sung  to  deaf  gods,  does  she  wait  for  her  wander- 
ing music  to  return  ?  This  is  the  countenance 
of  all  humanity,  troubled  by  the  first  whisper 
of  the  Sirens'  song;  it  is  the  classical  embodi- 
ment of  Romance. 


SIRENIC A 


33 


III 


It  was  so,  by  some  lyric  phrase  arraigning 
the  set  life,  by  some  high  fancy  of  a  philoso- 
pher, by  a  sculptor's  seeming  aberration,  that 
the  Sirens  were  veritably  known  to  men  while 
Greece  was  still  Greece,  and  free.  The  place 
for  the  breach  was  chosen,  a  party  within  the 
walls  won  over ;  what  need  to  recount  the 
taking  of  the  city,  when  it  befell  in  the  full- 
ness of  unmerciful  time  ?  For  awhile,  even 
after  the  disaster,  the  old  law  of  measure 
was  allowed  to  stand ;  but  at  last  the  sub- 
stance smouldered  away ;  it  became  adust.  It 
remained  as  a  writing  upon  a  paper  charred 
through  and  through,  in  a  dead  stillness  a 
dead  thing,  telling  only  this  that  once  it  had  a 
meaning,  and  hardly  more  material  than  the 
breath  by  which  it  should  be  destroyed.  The 
breath  came  out  of  the  East  like  a  breeze 
heavy  with  Sabaean  fragrances ;  it  brought 
into  the  West  frenzies,  strange  loves,  unknown 
mysteries.  In  the  very  Parthenon  there  was 
set  up  an  oriental  creed  ;  the  Sirens  triumphed  ; 


The  in- 
sufferable 
Mean. 


34 


SIRENIC A 


The  in- 
sufferable 
Mean. 


the  defeat  of  Xerxes  was  avenged.  The 
shadow  of  the  immeasurable  passed  over  the 
land  of  measure  ;  last  indignity  of  all,  it  flowed 
onward  to  the  seven  hills  of  Rome,  leaving 
Hellas  aside  as  a  province  superseded,  a  place 
of  no  account.  The  world  was  enfranchised 
from  her  law,  which  might  no  more  become 
law  universal  than  the  architecture  so  evoca- 
tive of  her  spirit  might  satisfy  the  desire  of 
every  people.  The  Hellenic  temple  soothes 
and  delights  the  mind,  persuading  it  of  a 
power  in  man  strong  to  achieve  all  things ;  in 
every  part,  and  in  the  whole,  it  is  instinct 
with  a  supreme  grace  and  continence.  The 
columns  spring  like  living  stems ;  and  as,  in 
the  tree,  the  risen  sap  flows  easily  along  the 
branches,  so  all  upward  effort  is  diffused  along 
these  entablatures  and  ebbs  in  a  harmony  of 
receding  lines.  The  roof,  with  its  broad 
gable,  confines  and  embraces  the  whole ;  its 
calm  length,  its  quiet  overshadowing,  are 
symbols  of  a  world  summed,  contained,  and 
pacified.  The  temple  of  Segesta,  framed  in 
its    peaceful    hills,    consents    with    all    seen 


SIRENIC A 


35 


Nature,  and  in  the  hour  of  our  devotion  there 
seems  no  thought  ennobling  the  relation  of 
man  and  universe  which,  in  the  language  of 
its  great  day,  it  should  not  beautifully  pro- 
claim. Exacting  beyond  reason  might  the  life 
appear,  for  which  this  absolute  grace  were  not 
enough.  And  yet  it  does  not  suffice  ;  it  leaves 
unsatisfied  the  half  of  the  insurgent  human 
soul.  Consummate  though  it  be,  and  fortified 
against  all  the  surprises  and  aggressions  of 
infinity,  it  yet  remains  a  pattern  of  the  half 
soul  and  a  regional  perfection.  The  mad 
yearnings,  the  misgivings,  the  revolts  of  the 
enchanted  spirit  find  here  no  countenance ;  it 
is  too  wholly  of  the  gods,  to  whom  alone  is 
given  the  life  without  bewitchment :  the  gods, 
whose  every  desire  is  appeased,  who  are  never 
long  fasting,  whose  cups  run  over.  As  for  the 
ungodlike  mass  of  men  multiplying  at  large 
upon  the  earth,  the  glory  of  it  elates  and 
flatters  them,  but  is  ever  incongruous  with 
their  discontent ;  they  essay  it,  but  rise  unsat- 
isfied, tasting  an  ambrosia  which  is  not  for  a 
mortal  hunger.     It  cannot  assuage  the  dark 


The  in- 
sufferable 
Mean. 


36 


SIRENIC A 


The  in- 
sufferable 
Mean. 


The 
building 

of 
Romance. 


disturbing  fancies  or  take  the  poison  from  the 
unquiet  mind.  For  them  it  is  spectacular, 
and  reserved  for  rare  days  ;  to  the  perturbable 
brood  of  man,  in  the  usual  hour  of  conflict,  a 
thing  insufferably  serene. 

In  the  dark  ages,  when  Greece  and  her 
works  were  for  a  time  forgotten,  the  Sirens, 
wearied  with  their  victorious  war,  went  apart, 
and  in  a  cavern  filled  with  tremulous  wave- 
light  dreamed  centuries  away.  Many  in  those 
times  saw  Pan,  when  he  stole  across  the 
moonlight,  or  lay  among  the  rocks,  pondering 
the  hour  when  he  should  come  back  to  his 
own.  And  many  heard  the  Sirens  singing  in 
their  dream  the  song  that  goes  over  the  world. 
But  none  saw  face  to  face,  or  heard  to  the  full 
end.  The  god  fled  ;  the  music  died  unappre- 
hended, like  that  strange  chime  of  ocean 
which  sounds  out  of  the  deep  and  is  lost 
again,  when  the  still  night  breathes  mystery 
in  summer.  But  when  at  last  the  time  of 
preparation  was  fulfilled,  the  Sirens  awoke 
like  the  Seven  of  Ephesus,  refreshed,  and 
prescient  of  their  greater  fortune.     For  the 


SIRENIC A 


37 


barbarians  had  changed  the  face  of  the  earth  ; 
like  the  Avenger  of  the  prophet,  they  had 
flowed  with  an  overrunning  flood  and  pursued 
their  enemies  into  darkness.  The  minds  of 
men  were  renewed,  and  by  that  long  darkness 
made  propense  to  shadows,  as  if  they  had 
been  coloured  by  the  grey  stormy  heavens 
in  which  alone  Victory  would  now  spread 
her  wing.  Athens  was  unknown ;  her  art 
buried,  her  literature  in  exile ;  no  power  stood 
now  protective  between  the  Sirens  and  man- 
kind. So  they  sang  to  the  master-builder  an 
unthwarted  song.  They  made  him  body  forth 
the  theory  of  life  which  Greece  refused  to 
utter;  they  tempted  and  incited  and  beset, 
until  the  Gothic  style  arose  and  all  the 
charmed  stone  proclaimed  them.  There  are 
minds,  exact  and  critical,  which  reject  this 
name  of  Gothic,  as  unworthy  of  an  exalted 
art;  yet  the  term  is  not  so  ill  imagined,  or 
without  its  poetry,  allusive  as  it  is  to  a  certain 
indomitable  wildness  in  this  style,  a  character 
of  aboriginal  strength,  drawn,  as  it  were,  from 
the  blood  of  Amals.     Is  there  no  point  and 


The 
building 

of 
Romance. 


3* 


SIRENIC A 


The 
building 

of 
Romance. 


virtue  in  a  name  which  so  tersely  conveys 
the  essential  severing  quality  between  the 
mediaeval  and  the  Hellenic  art  ?  They  who 
first  aspersed  by  it,  baptised  more  honourably 
than  they  willed,  giving  to  us  who  have  come 
after,  in  place  of  their  obscuring  slight,  a 
gleam  of  underlying  truth.  For  the  great 
Gothic  churches  rise  as  if,  like  Amphion's 
walls,  they  had  been  called  to  birth  by  music ; 
and  to  music  they  rose  indeed,  an  Amcebean 
strain  of  angels  and  Sirens,  in  which  the  Sirens 
could  never  be  chanted  down.  The  unrest 
which  the  Greek  temple  denies,  the  cathedral 
of  the  Middle  Ages  cries  to  heaven.  The 
high  vaults  bear  down  upon  the  walls,  holding 
them  in  an  unpausing  fierce  resistance.  All 
here  is  pitted  and  opposed ;  force  visibly 
meets  force  as  when  wrestlers  stand  breast  to 
breast,  in  appearance  still,  but  alert,  and  feel- 
ing after  the  first  faint  sign  of  advantage. 
You  seem,  by  a  stretch  of  fancy,  to  hear 
sounds  issue  from  these  walls,  the  gasp  of  the 
caught  breath,  the  sigh  of  the  living  creature 
in  tense  endurance.     Every  stone   speaks  of 


SIRENIC A 


39 


struggle ;  all  urges  and  ascends,  from  the 
buttresses  which  rise  one  above  the  other  as 
if  they  stormed  the  height,  to  the  pinnacles 
and  the  spires  beyond,  losing  their  vanes 
among  the  clouds.  All  the  huge  structure 
strives  and  undergoes ;  there  are  hours  when 
it  seems  to  lament  and  supplicate.  But  always 
it  speaks  of  souls  committed  to  the  dread 
adventure  of  living,  for  whom  there  may  be 
no  rest  in  any  Hellenic  dream  of  harmony. 
When  you  see  the  high  nave  of  Amiens  occupy 
the  heavens,  or  Chartres  upon  its  hill,  or 
Lincoln,  some  dream  of  finality  accomplished 
may  at  first  deceive  the  mind ;  you  may  think 
of  the  Seraphic  Doctor,  or  of  Vincent  of 
Beauvais,  building  up  knowledge  into  one  all- 
contenting  whole.  But  draw  nearer,  and  per- 
ceive the  wide-flung  shadows,  the  cavernous 
entrances,  the  ranks  of  pointing  stone,  the 
multitude  of  limbs  and  features  conspiring 
upward  in  one  sustained  ascent;  it  is  no 
longer  the  pride  in  human  wisdom  achieved 
which  compels  the  mind ;  rather  the  mortal 
dismay  of  lowliness  shall  gain  you,  the  sense 


The 
building 

of 
Romance. 


40 


SIRENIC A 


The 
building 

of 
Romance. 


of  the  undone,  the  yearning  after  the  undis- 
covered. It  is  not  the  silver  voice  of  Aquinas 
that  you  hear,  but  the  groan  of  Abelard  under 
the  thrust  of  his  untamed  desire.  All  that 
the  Greek  suppressed,  here  finds  its  utterance  ; 
that  which  an  Ictinus  could  not  say,  is  out- 
spoken by  a  Robert  de  Luzarches.  It  is  by  a 
grace  of  good  event,  and  full  of  morality,  that 
the  visible  forms  of  Sirens  are  sometimes 
carved  upon  mediaeval  portals.  The  clerks 
will  tell  you  that  they  are  there  to  point  a 
moral  of  Honorius,  the  plain  old  moral  against 
luxury  and  the  pride  of  life.  Yet  any  who 
will,  believe  it ;  let  them  search  the  bestiaries 
and  take  council  with  the  drear  scholastics. 
But  none  who  have  heard  the  song  are  igno- 
rant of  this,  that  the  strange  sculptured  figures 
are  not  there  for  edification  only,  but  also  for 
a  witness ;  they  are  there  as  the  emblems  of 
that  life  upon  which  the  Greek  refused  to  let 
men  look,  the  life  untranquil  and  thwarted  of 
achievement,  the  life  enchanted  away  from 
happiness,  so  far  away,  into  such  a  mystery 
of  distance,  that  the  things  which  it  may  here 


SIRENIC A 


4i 


fulfil  become  indifferent,  and  the  love  of  the 
whole  soul  goes  out  to  things  upon  which 
the  possessing  hand  has  never  closed.  In  this 
great  art  of  the  North,  the  Sirens  made  the 
world  confess  them;  here  they  established 
against  the  classic  arrogation  the  equal  claim 
of  Romance.  Not  the  coloured  chivalry  of 
knights,  show  of  blazons,  joy  of  jousts,  charm 
of  the  gai  scavoir;  not  a  posture  of  affliction  in 
minds  unmatured  ;  not  a  literary  fashion  ;  not 
reverie  by  lakes,  or  high  sentiment  in  moun- 
tains, the  facile  tears  of  Rene  or  the  fanfarons 
of  Ruy  Bias ;  Romance  is  fulfilled  in  none  of 
these  things.  But  Romance  is  the  root  or 
substance  of  which  all  these  are  inessential 
accidents ;  it  is  the  dark  water  under  the  gay 
barge,  the  rock  which  holds  the  samphire,  the 
texture  over  which  the  bright  embroidery  runs. 
It  is  that  which  shall  remain  when  these  are 
wrecked,  or  withered,  or  torn  away,  that  which 
was  before  their  beginning;  the  answer  of  the 
human  soul  under  compulsion  of  infinity,  the 
mood  of  a  vast  desire  hungry  still  when 
the  sops  of  happiness  are  gone. 


The 
building 

of 
Romance. 


42 


SIRENICA 


Dante 

and 

Odysseus. 


Though  the  master-builders  had  proclaimed 
them,  the  Sirens  were  not  yet  content ;  they 
sought  a  poet  to  spread  their  message  in  a 
southern  land.  They  sang  to  Dante  a  sover- 
eign music,  inweaving  in  it  marvels  resistless 
in  the  new  age ;  they  sang  of  Odysseus,  how, 
by  spite  of  Greeks,  he  had  been  dishonoured 
for  their  sake.  The  seer  of  lost  worlds  under- 
stood the  mysterious  heroic  soul ;  he  gazed 
down  into  it,  where,  himself  deceived,  he  had 
set  it  among  the  crooked  in  counsel;  and 
suddenly,  as  the  twin-crested  flame  swayed  to 
and  fro  before  him,  the  splendour  and  surge 
of  inward  light  broke  forth,  which  jealous  men 
have  not  the  power  to  quench  nor  magnani- 
mous gods  the  will.  His  own  soul  flowed  to 
it  with  an  answering  fire ;  the  glory  of  infinite 
adventure  called  to  him  by  the  voice  of  the 
arch-wanderer,  and  the  overclouding  of  it  by 
ignorance  or  malice  prepense  became  abom- 
inable to  him  as  a  proven  wrong.  As  he 
pondered,  he  discovered  the  old  injustice : 
even  the  Homeric  ending  was  now  false  to 
him ;  its  divine  flight  was  spoiled,  the  greater 


SIRENIC A 


43 


poetry  abased  at  the  will  of  earthlings.  A 
hater  of  all  turbulence  and  lover  of  ancient 
grandeur,  he  yet  did  not  shrink  from  violence 
to  the  famous  story,  perceiving  it  his  business 
to  make  that  high  type  among  men  resplendent 
before  other  eyes,  as  now  before  his  own.  It 
was  as  when  a  discoverer's  hand  removes 
from  a  statue  ill-restored  some  added  and 
incongruous  head,  setting  upon  it  once  more 
the  authentic  brow  and  features :  upon  the 
instant  all  is  changed,  the  makeshift  that  once 
pleased  becomes  intolerable  ;  in  this  form  and 
no  other  we  know  that  the  sculptor  embodied 
his  dream.  Dante  is  direct  and  fearless;  he 
renews  as  if  the  whole  poem  were  his  own. 
With  the  economy  of  great  art  he  ends  all  in 
a  score  of  memorable  verses,  which  disengage 
the  figure  of  Odysseus  from  the  falsity  and 
hardness  of  the  later  legend ;  the  veil  falls 
away  like  a  frippery,  baring  to  the  sun  the 
form  of  the  hero  as  he  had  lived  and  was  now 
worthily  to  die.  We  see  no  longer  the  mean 
antagonist  who  went  down  into  Egypt  after 
poisoned   arrows;    the  obedient    minister   of 


Dante 

and 

Odysseus. 


44 


SIRENICA 


Dante 

and 

Odysseus. 


tyrants  is  gone,  and  the  heartless  logician  of 
the  Attic  drama.  In  his  stead  we  see  one 
of  an  all-comprehending  sight,  no  reckoner  of 
gains  or  balancer  of  dark  expedients,  but  a 
warrior  too  proud  to  feint  or  foin  with  weak- 
lings, and  even  in  his  decay  fierce  for  the  great 
adventure.  That  "  little  speech  "  is  wonderful 
in  which  the  comrades  of  the  last  voyage  for- 
get all  their  feebleness,  though  their  still 
harbour  is  far  behind  them,  and  before  them 
the  unsailed  Ocean  of  the  West,  awful  even  to 
strong  men.  It  is  no  marvel  that  a  tale  thus 
magically  told  should  have  graven  itself  in  the 
hearts  of  other  poets,  who  found  revelation  in 
it  as  from  a  chapter  of  life  written  at  one 
dipping  of  the  pen  with  the  high  simplicity  of 
a  scripture ;  the  exceeding  fire  of  its  truth 
burned  it  into  the  memory  of  our  own  poet, 
who,  in  the  mere  retelling,  rose  to  a  rare  height 
by  communion  with  a  greater  genius.  The 
message  once  proclaimed,  the  old  end  of 
the  Odyssey  is  tame  to  us  and  unworthy  of  its 
earlier  course ;  the  mountain  river  flags  by 
clay  banks;    it  dies  sluggishly  into  a  leaden 


SIRENIC A 


45 


sea.  What  blindness  would  have  had  us  bid 
farewell  to  the  returned  Odysseus  at  his  hearth- 
side,  leaving  him  to  a  quiet  death  in  the  full- 
ness of  his  time  and  among  his  own  people  ? 
It  is  flat  inconsequence  that  such  a  one  should 
belie  the  whole  meaning  of  his  life,  sinking 
into  a  last  ease  at  the  end  of  it.  Great 
adventurers  do  not  so  die,  least  of  all  they 
who  have  heard  out  the  Sirens'  music.  But 
how  natural  it  is,  when  the  hero  rises  up,  and 
the  word  is  passed  for  sailing ;  how  it  stirs 
the  blood,  when  the  lords  of  Ithaca  obey  the 
call,  when  they  step  the  mast  with  stiff  arms 
of  age,  and  having  poured  libation  to  Poseidon, 
sail  for  the  world's  end  without  a  doubt  or 
question,  as  if  they  went  upon  the  affairs  of  a 
common  day.  And  when  they  have  passed 
the  Pillars  of  Heracles,  and  with  a  following 
wind  run  out  into  the  ocean  towards  the  baths 
of  the  Western  stars,  what  inevitable  Tightness 
sounds  out  of  the  words  :  "  Remember  the  seed 
from  which  ye  sprang.  Ye  were  not  fashioned 
for  animal  content,  but  to  follow  after  valour 
and  understanding."      Aye,  it  is    all  in  the 


Dante 

and 

Odysseus. 


46 


SIRENIC A 


Dante 

and 

Odysseus. 


divine  way  of  nature  when  at  last  there  looms 
a  dark  mountain,  and  there  descends  from  it  a 
blast  that  spins  the  ship  about,  crushing  it  like 
a  shell  in  the  crossing  tides.  And  when,  in 
view  of  the  Fortunate  Isles,  far  from  Ithaca, 
in  a  whirlwind  and  a  darkness,  Odysseus  and 
his  crew  go  down  in  forty  fathoms,  it  is  the 
end  which  the  Sirens  sung,  and  the  gods  willed, 
and  Destiny  foreordained.  In  this  death  these 
wanderers  are  themselves  ;  they  have  not  aban- 
doned the  quest ;  they  have  been  faithful  to 
the  last  hour.  Meeting  his  doom  so,  the  great 
hazarder  fulfils  a  destiny  for  which  his  whole 
life  was  prelude.  The  conclusion  brings  relief ; 
it  exalts  at  once  and  satisfies.  We  had  not 
misread  the  heroic  nature ;  we  were  right 
when  we  knew  that  it  was  never  for  him  to  sit 
as  a  grandsire  in  an  ingle,  who  carried  home 
the  Sirens'  music  and  gave  it  echoing-place  in 
the  rafters  of  his  hall.  We  did  not  err,  know- 
ing surely  in  our  hearts  that  there  must  come 
an  hour  when  its  melodies  should  awaken  and 
gather  to  a  tumult,  when  the  door  should  at 
last  be  flung  wide,  and  he  should  rise  up  to  go 


SIRENICA 


47 


with  every  true  man  of  his  fellowship  behind 
him.  In  the  old  Odyssey  that  hour  never 
sounds ;  the  tale  swerves  at  the  end  under 
some  pressure  of  weariness  or  convention ; 
Odysseus  drifts  upon  the  years  like  the  steers- 
man who  nods  over  the  tiller  and  lets  it  sway 
out  of  his  hand.  The  roamer  over  immeasur- 
able leagues  lies  down  at  the  last  to  wait  his 
death ;  he  dies  upon  a  bed,  like  a  faint  man, 
by  inches.  This  end  is  an  offence,  and  a 
Lucian  can  but  cheapen  it  with  his  sneers. 
All  is  nobler  in  the  Divine  Comedy ;  the  right 
Odysseus  comes  again  ;  the  false  eidolon  which 
defamed  him  is  driven  even  from  the  world  of 
Shades. 

Poetry  had  begun  the  wrong ;  it  was  meet 
that  poetry  should  sing  the  palinode.  The 
Sirens  were  justified  with  the  hero,  and  dis- 
covered as  the  chosen  instruments  of  fate. 
Of  all  the  persons  in  the  Epic,  they  only  might 
be  invoked  to  explain  the  new  event  of  the 
story ;  none  else  could  have  urged  to  that  last 
revolt  against  the  flickering,  fanned  life  of  age. 
The  end  was  indeed  made  certain  in  the  hour 


Dante 

and 

Odysseus. 


The  " 
Sirens' 
power. 


48 


SIRENIC A 


The 
Sirens' 
power. 


when  Odysseus  stood  bound  with  cords,  drink- 
ing in  sweet  sounds  and  storing  his  memory 
with  enchantment ;  it  was  then  that  the  wan- 
derer knew  he  should  die  wandering,  to  become 
the  exemplar  of  a  passion  indelible  from  the 
heart  of  man.  Two  vast  desires  pulse  through 
all  things,  one  for  rest,  the  other  for  endeavour, 
eternally  renewed  upon  fresh  planes  and 
through  unfolding  mysteries  world  without  end. 
All  in  us  that  is  physical  and  worn  by  time 
yields  to  the  first,  all  that  is  ponderable  verges 
to  its  fulfilment.  The  heaviness  of  the  crea- 
tion works  for  it ;  the  subsidence  of  things 
prepares  its  victory.  A  natural  philosopher 
has  said  that  Matter  longs  for  rest ;  that  the 
state  to  which  it  tends  is  not  perfection,  but 
death ;  that  were  the  yearning  of  the  atoms 
fulfilled,  the  world  would  be  locked  in  lasting 
sleep.  But  against  this  dull  trending  towards 
repose  is  matched  in  primordial  opposition  a 
desire  of  motion  in  its  nature  spiritual,  a  vital 
quick  antagonist,  wherever  the  bolder  life  moves 
in  its  pilgrimage  over  the  earth.  Of  this  desire 
the  Sirens  sing,  and  therefore  it  is  that  they 


SIRENIC A 


49 


survive  all  change,  coeval  with  the  world,  and 
living  out  all  its  ages. 

IV 

Against  the  enchantresses  who  foiled  Hellas, 
simplicity  strives  in  vain.  Such  elemental 
spells  are  theirs  that  they  would  surely  charm 
all  thought,  did  not  the  kindlier  gods  fear  for 
men,  seeking  to  close  their  ears  by  artifice,  as 
by  her  device  of  wax  Calypso  saved  the  com- 
panions of  Odysseus.  The  gods  thus  pre- 
serve the  many ;  yet  they  would  not,  if  they 
might,  save  all,  or  wholly  prevent  the  danger. 
For  desiring  man  to  rise,  they  must  needs 
allow  him  the  perilous  way,  and  when  a  new 
height  must  be  scaled,  consent  to  sacrifice 
that  his  race  may  climb  nearer  their  shining 
seats.  They  consent  with  pain,  resisting  still 
the  sacrifice  beyond  hope  and  the  profitless 
waste  of  life ;  but  Fate,  which  is  above  them 
and  blind,  confounds  their  purpose,  driving 
within  the  range  of  the  music  souls  which  their 
mercy  would  fain  have  spared.  Fate  is  hard ; 
she  will  not  suffer  choice  or  pity ;  the  Sirens 


Their 

common 

prey. 


5° 


SIRENIC A 


Their     • 
common 
prey. 


must  sing  to  all  whom  she  sends  towards  them, 
winning  by  her  fault  their  evil  name  for  cruelty. 
They  may  not  do  the  kind  gods'  will,  and 
tempt  strength  or  genius  only ;  all  must  hear 
who  are  driven  upon  their  path,  the  weak  with 
the  strong,  the  crew  with  the  captain,  the 
faint  with  the  ardent  soul.  Might  they  have 
charmed  genius  alone,  even  Greece  had  praised 
them ;  for  when  genius  obeys  the  song,  it  is 
never  wholly  thwarted;  it  brings  back  from 
the  high  places  of  adventure  that  which  may 
be  heard  or  seen,  that  which  is  laudable  of 
men,  and  abides  among  them  for  a  witness ; 
some  image  of  a  divine  form,  some  lingering 
word  of  angels,  some  echo  of  an  immortal 
music;  fragments  snatched  from  a  world  half 
apprehended,  but  like  sweet  fruits  of  Eden 
refreshing  the  descended  soul.  Genius  is 
repaid  for  half  its  suffering;  yet  even  the 
creative  life  is  haunted  by  the  Imagined  Bet- 
ter Thing,  which  in  more  vivid  shapes  than 
any  seen  of  dull  minds,  will  ever  arise  behind 
the  thing  achieved,  and  deform  its  beauty  for 
the  achiever,  until  that  which  all   the  world 


SIRENICA 


51 


praises  is  to  him  who  wrought  it  the  work  of 
miscreant  fancy  or  the  visible  nonsense  of  a 
duped  brain.  Genius  creates ;  genius  may  buy 
with  blood ;  it  can  afford  the  cost,  and,  after 
all  the  waste,  has  some  residue  of  the  purchase. 
But  woe  to  those  who  are  made  to  dream  the 
creator's  dream  without  his  finer  understand- 
ing or  his  skill  of  capture. 

These  are  the  true  victims  of  the  Sirens, 
the  great  company  of  the  enchanted,  who  for 
an  hour  of  bliss  pay  dearly  by  long  days  of 
inachievement.  These  are  they  whose  undo- 
ing, so  purposeless,  so  vain,  appears  an  abuse 
of  immortal  powers.  Surely  it  is  a  hard  thing 
that  the  divine  maleficent  song  should  lure 
towards  the  height  which  genius  reaches  the 
soul  which  can  never  win  the  vision,  but, 
dazed  with  a  moment's  joy,  is  held  ineffectual 
in  a  frustrate  anguish  of  attention.  The  won- 
ders half-revealed  are  too  far  or  brilliant  for 
this  straining  sight;  all  vanishes  and  flows 
away,  like  the  beauty  of  an  unknown  country 
under  the  lightning  of  a  summer  night  when 
we  are  borne  across  it  on  swift  wheels,  never 


Their 

common 

prey. 


The 

maleficent 

song. 


52 


SIRENIC A 


The 

maleficent 

song. 


to  return  or  see  it  under  the  sure  light  of  day. 
Life  is  despoiled  of  peace  for  the  chance  hear- 
ing of  one  song :  life,  the  best  gift  df  gods ; 
the  flawless  jewel  is  darkened  and  may  never 
shine  tranquilly  again.  Shall  there  not  be 
pardon  for  him  whom  the  mockery  of  false 
promise  drives  to  impious  complaint  ?  The 
marvels  half-descried  are  lost  beyond  his  utter- 
ance, yet  they  will  not  vanish  from  his  life,  or 
leave  him  to  the  old  peace,  but  like  a  mist 
indissoluble  of  the  sun,  haunt  him  still  with 
their  useless  gleams  and  splendours.  They 
trouble  the  soul ;  they  sadden  the  colours  of 
the  world.  The  cadences  heard  in  those  heights 
descend  to  him  in  the  low  places  as  a  thin  mur- 
mur out  of  the  infinite  distance,  ghostly  chords 
and  evanescent  harmonies  which  come  and  go 
too  fitfully  for  apprehension.  So  the  lark  sings 
on  a  boisterous  day  high  above  a  crossing 
wind :  it  is  sure  he  sings,  for  ever  and  again  a 
note  will  fall  earthward ;  but  the  strained  ear 
may  not  link  into  their  first  order  the  jewels 
of  scattered  sound  ;  they  are  gone  ;  the  winds 
have  withdrawn  them  into  immensity,  wonders 


SIRENICA 


53 


confusedly  heard,  and  glories  rendered  to 
oblivion.  It  is  well  that  the  rumour  of  com- 
mon life  drowns  wholly  for  the  mass  of  men 
the  echo  of  the  Sirens'  voice  ;  it  is  well  that  of 
all  earth's  millions,  thousands  only  hear.  If 
we  but  knew,  the  thunder  of  the  noisy  world 
against  which  we  murmur  is  a  power  of  safety 
over  life,  and  often  they  who  rail  most  loudly 
against  it  have  best  cause  for  giving  thanks. 
For  that  all-enfolding  din  saves  more  men  than 
the  Greek's  exclusive  reason ;  the  hebetude 
born  of  labour  stops  more  ears  than  wax. 
Long  joyless  poverty  in  that  tumult  is  nearer 
happiness  than  this  fantastic  affluence  which 
deceives  the  hungry  heart.  For  across  the 
solitude  the  insidious  voice  comes  rounding  in 
the  ear;  there  is  an  end  of  acquiescence  in 
the  good  things  that  are ;  there  rises  a  mad 
desire  for  the  visionary  grace,  the  whole  being 
sways  to  a  tide  of  strange  rebellion.  And  the 
voice  speaks  very  sweetly,  in  its  melody 
beyond  resistance :  "  Happiness  is  a  mean 
gift;  it  is  the  animal's  ease.  But  man  was 
not  born  to  go  the  way  of  oxen,  with  his  eyes 


The 

maleficent 

song. 


54 


SIRENIC A 


The 

maleficent 

song. 


The 

Imagined 
Better 
Thing. 


bent  earthward,  imagining  his  homestead  all 
the  universe.  For  whom,  if  not  for  man,  are 
the  horizons  robed  in  light  and  colour,  and  the 
heavens  sown  with  quivering  stars  ?  Awake, 
O  touched  of  Circe's  wand,  fallen  semblances 
of  men,  win  back  the  diviner  form,  and  with  it 
the  divine  desire.  Shall  the  fish  leap  out  above 
his  stream  and  the  mole  explore  the  day,  but 
man  keep  within  set  pales  and  bind  his  soul 
upon  a  tether  ?  " 

It  is  the  voice,  accursed  of  the  Greeks ;  it 
is  the  Sirens'  voice.  Whosoever  gives  ear,  is 
straightway  rapt  far  from  the  good  common 
things  that  he  might  have  loved;  when  he 
returns  to  them,  they  are  transformed  for  him 
and  hateful ;  he  may  no  longer  have  the  same 
pleasure  of  them;  they  satisfy  his  soul  no 
more.  The  harmonies  of  life  are  become  a 
vague  dissonance,  tuneless  and  persistent,  like 
an  Arab  song.  In  the  well  of  satisfaction 
rises  a  water  of  gall ;  the  very  duty  fulfilled 
leaves  behind  it  a  remorse  for  something 
haply  overlooked  or  misaccomplished ;  until 
another  hour  of  vision  comes,  there  is  nothing 


SIRENIC A 


55 


but  the  life  preoccupied,  the  doing  without 
zeal,  the  hearkening  without  attention.  Pursu- 
ing the  smooth  paven  ways,  he  seems  to  him- 
self sedulous  over  trivial  aims,  and  provident 
of  supervacuous  ends ;  the  vanity  of  all  these 
things  is  so  transparent  to  him  that  the  busi- 
ness of  material  existence  becomes  a  by-work, 
an  idle  labour  of  perfunction ;  what  is  it  but  a 
screen  or  cloak  to  interpose  between  curious 
eyes  and  the  secret  errantry  of  the  soul  ?  Let 
the  Imagined  Better  Thing  but  distantly 
appear,  and  the  beauty  of  all  beside  is  dis- 
coloured in  the  contrast,  as  the  hue  of  a  lowlier 
stone  pales  before  the  royal  glow  of  sards. 
For  the  desire  of  this,  the  good  things  of  use, 
the  deeds  rich  in  content,  are  tedious  to  him 
and  profitless;  and  if  the  absent  mind  have 
no  success  among  these,  how  much  less  the 
absent  soul  ?  While  he  gives  them  his  forced 
interest,  impassioned  longing  for  things  beyond 
breaks  in  upon  his  labour  and  makes  it  vain. 
He  stands  amid  the  swathes  reaping ;  suddenly 
the  full  ears  at  his  feet  are  vile  to  him  for  the 
beauty  of  some  zone  of  distant  poppies.     He 


The 

Imagined 

Better 

Thing. 


56 


SI RENIC A 


The 

Imagined 

Better 

Thing. 


stays  his  scythe,  and  is  left  behind  by  the 
whole  company  of  reapers  ;  a  scorn  for  all  reap- 
ing and  garnering  rises  to  a  full  flood  within 
him  and  possesses  him  to  the  last  recesses  of 
his  nature.  From  that  hour  he  may  work  no 
more.  He  lets  fall  the  scythe  and  forsakes 
the  field  and  his  fellow-labourers  in  this  har- 
vest ;  his  soul,  like  a  bird  escaped,  flies  forth 
to  those  golden  cities  "ten  months'  journey 
deep  "  in  the  dear  wildernesses  of  imagination. 
She  has  outlived  the  grey  day ;  it  is  over  and 
gone ;  for  a  dreamwhile  she  will  live  the  true 
life,  come  what  disaster  may.  Once  more  she 
shall  know  the  rapture  of  attempt,  the  quick- 
ening smart  of  failure ;  once  more  she  shall 
beat  a  divine  air ;  once  more  wing  free  under 
the  firmament  and  the  unattainable  stars.  It 
shall  be  a  glory  for  her,  but  it  shall  be  in  vain  ; 
hers  is  no  strength  for  the  flight  of  eagles. 
For  him  whose  soul  awakes  to  disillusion  out 
of  this  dream,  the  old  joy  of  work  and  action 
wanes ;  existence  grows  cold,  like  a  passion 
prolonged  beyond  its  hour  by  some  blind 
loyalty  of  habit.     He  moves  towards  all  goals 


SIRENIC A 


57 


indifferent ;  he  disputes  with  the  shrugged 
shoulder ;  he  concludes  by  passing  on.  The 
midways  of  life  become  to  him  places  for 
digression,  its  interests  trifles, parerga  et parali- 
potnena,  negligible,  vain  things.  If  he  explores 
causes  and  effects,  the  problem  solved  is  a 
puzzle  contrived  for  a  child's  understanding; 
if  he  controls  men,  he  is  a  mockery  to  himself, 
and  centurion  of  a  hundred  atoms.  In  this 
lassitude  he  sees  his  day  perish ;  while  his 
hand  hangs  idly,  the  threads  of  human  love 
are  ravelled.  Pursuits  and  occupations  are 
naught,  and  work  a  dullness ;  they  malce  no 
music  for  him ;  there  is  no  rhythm  of  the  iron 
whereon  they  are  forged  and  fashioned.  It  is 
said  of  the  second  Cain  that  he  had  delight  of 
the  sound  of  his  hammers,  perceiving  intervals 
and  just  accords,  as  his  work  sang  to  him 
from  the  anvil  and  rejoiced  his  heart.  To  all 
men  whose  soul  is  in  their  labour  there  sounds 
the  same  music ;  it  is  well  with  them  ;  they 
are  the  happy  ;  they  inherit  the  earth.  But  to 
him  who  toils  with  a  mutinous  and  transcend- 
ing soul,  the  anvil  rings  untrue,  the  fire  of  the 


The 

Imagined 
Better 
Thing. 


58 


SIRENIC A 


The 

Imagined 

Better 

Thing. 


The  rams 

of 
Nebaioth. 


forge  dies  down  to  ashes.  And  by  this  rough 
practice  the  wings  of  his  soul  are  frayed  and 
wounded  ;  he  fears  for  it  as  the  power  of  flight 
is  more  and  more  impaired.  "  Knew  ye  not 
that  the  soul  that  hath  but  few  pens  and 
feathers,  he  may  not  well  fly  ?  " 

This,  then,  is  the  cruelty  of  the  Sirens' 
song :  all  who  hear  it,  save  they  have  genius, 
are  like  to  be  spoiled  for  the  good  things  that 
satisfy.  They  are  stricken  beyond  cure  ;  their 
blood  is  tainted  with  a  poison  of  disaffection. 
Let  a  man  once  hearken  to  that  music,  and 
thereafter  in  the  world  of  practice  he  shall  find 
nothing  after  his  own  heart,  while  from  the 
visionary  world  he  shall  come  but  empty  away. 
Yet  the  world  of  visions  is  now  the  country  of 
his  soul ;  though  he  have  no  franchise  of  it, 
he  is  less  alien  and  exile  there  than  in  the 
place  of  noise  and  war  and  traffic.  Whenever 
he  may  win  free,  he  wanders  back  to  the  high 
region  of  his  discomfiture,  like  some  deceived 
inveterate  lover  whom  no  cruelty  can  keep 
from  his  unprofitable  devotion.  For  this  mad- 
ness he  becomes  a   stock  for  scorn ;    he  is 


SIRENIC A 


marked  as  one  without  fixed  course,  eccentric 
from  the  orbit  of  common  fortune.  His 
neighbours  compare  his  ineffectual  pilgrimage 
with  their  rewarded  labour;  while  he  wan- 
dered, they  have  worked  on ;  they  see  his 
fields  empty,  and  the  rams  of  Nebaioth  graze 
down  their  pastures.  Nor,  being  mortal,  can  he 
pass  the  lordly  rams  and  always  care  nothing ; 
when  disillusion  unseals  his  eyes,  he  also 
must  make  comparison  and  cast  a  balance  to 
his  undoing.  He  sees  himself  nothing  in  this 
world  of  the  worshipful  and  esteemed.  Like 
the  sage  in  ancient  China,  he  beholds  them 
happy  as  on  a  tower  in  spring  while  he  has 
small  pleasure  of  existence ;  they  are  full  of 
light ;  he  dwells  obscure  and  desolate  amid  his 
unfulfilled  desires.  Like  the  Christian  mystic, 
he  is  inwardly  afflicted ;  the  sorrow  pierces  to 
the  very  marrow  of  his  soul.  "That  which 
others  say  shall  be  heard ;  what  thou  sayest 
shall  be  accounted  nothing.  Others  shall  be  in 
great  praise  of  men,  but  of  thee  shall  no  word 
be."  West  and  East  tell  him  of  the  same 
heart's-misery ;  they  mock  him  with  cures  which 


59 

The  rams 
of 

Nebaioth. 


6o 


SIRENIC A 


The  rams* 

of     D 

Nebaioth. 


were  never  for  his  constitution.  He  turns  to 
go  his  ways  alone,  and  expiate  this  condign 
offence,  that  once  he  did  not  escape  a  wind 
which  bore  the  Sirens'  song.  The  general  life 
grows  with  each  day  more  hard  to  bear ;  for 
the  impassioned  thought,  to  him  now  the  only 
thought,  will  not  endure  close  comradeship  or 
suffer  him  to  pay  the  tribute  which  buys  suc- 
cess. It  must  ever  take  solitary  flight,  so  indi- 
vidual it  is  and  hard  to  be  imparted,  unsocial, 
and  averse  from  the  common  law  of  reason. 
It  is  told  of  lonely  settlers  who  have  dwelled 
long  upon  the  prairies  inbreathing  a  vast  air, 
that  they  are  disquieted  in  the  streets  of  cities, 
which  are  mean  to  them,  and  sinister  with  intol- 
erable shadows  of  confinement.  They  chafe 
like  wild  creatures  captured  ;  at  last  they  return 
to  the  infinite  plains  where  the  sun  in  his  rising 
and  going  down  is  not  walled  from  their  sight, 
knowing  their  wilderness  homelier  to  them  than 
all  that  crowded  world.  It  is  so  with  him  who, 
drawn  by  the  spell  of  the  fatal  music,  has  sped 
even  a  bowshot  towards  Immensity.  From 
the  habit  of  the  large  air  he  loses  the  love 


SIRENIC A 


61 


of  things  precise  and  trimmed ;  the  huddling  of 
minds  is  sordid  to  him ;  the  alleys  and  base- 
courts  of  logic  are  too  close  for  his  lungs.  He 
is  enticed  back  into  the  solitary  place ;  he 
yields  to  its  call,  a  truant  thenceforth  from  his 
commonwealth.  No  moralist  in  Hellas  would 
have  given  him  countenance  in  such  desertion  ; 
the  Spartans  would  have  saved  him  from  him- 
self by  rude  discipline,  and  haled  him  off  to  the 
mess  by  violence.  But  since  Romance  won 
its  right  upon  earth,  there  is  no  Laconian  law, 
only  the  law  of  the  unregimented  life,  which 
gives  license  to  stray  from  the  flock  and  be 
rent  upon  the  thorns. 

V 

I  have  heard  of  many  lives,  and  seen  more 
than  one,  too  deep  sunken  already  in  the 
bewitchment  to  hope  for  their  deliverance.  I 
knew  a  home  which  had  sufficed  a  man  for 
happy  years;  it  seemed  his  very  own  place, 
apportioned  for  his  peculiar  need ;  the  peace 
of  it  was  the  only  wealth  he  valued.  But  the 
Sirens  sang,  and  insensibly  he  saw  it  with  new 


The  rams 

of 
Nebaioth. 


The 

golden 

cup. 


62 


SIRENIC A 


The 

golden 
cup. 


eyes ;  they  charmed  him  into  contempt  for  a 
tranquillity  bought  at  the  price  of  straitness. 
He  felt  himself  inexplicably  yield  to  wilful 
aversions ;  then,  as  the  eyes  reproached  him 
for  whose  joy  till  now  he  had  laboured,  he 
covered  the  vestiges  of  remorse  with  shows 
of  strange  impatience.  Then  repentance  gave 
place  to  callousness  without  shame.  He  ceased 
to  make  excuse ;  openly  he  forsook  the  duties 
of  mutual  converse  for  abstruse  adventure  of 
the  sole  mind,  until  at  last  the  furies  marked 
him  ;  his  very  presence  seemed  to  assert  some 
inhuman  right  of  discommunion.  The  ease 
of  the  shared  life  being  gone,  the  life  itself 
chafed  him.  A  deep  discomfort  of  soul  drove 
him  often  abroad ;  but  all  parched  about  him 
like  meadows  in  drought,  where  the  fairy  ring 
alone  keeps  green.  In  truth  the  Sirens  had 
made  a  fairy  ring  for  his  soul ;  thither  they 
enticed  it,  to  mature  under  enchantment  the 
passion  for  difficult  and  exquisite  things.  This 
man,  once  careless  of  his  own  privilege  and 
silent  under  every  provocation,  now  shaped  his 
whole   existence  to  one  point  of  selfishness, 


SIRENIC A 


63 


which  glittered  for  him  until  he  had  eyes  for 
nothing  beside.  And  now  estrangement  swiftly 
grew  between  him  and  the  soul  chosen  to  be 
one  with  his  own  5  a  hateful  Rosicrucian  pride 
disjoined  them  ;  he  dared  to  feel  the  scorn  of 
the  initiate  for  the  profane.  The  old  ties,  at 
first  loosening  slowly,  soon  drifted  far  apart,  as 
Destiny,  weary  of  delay,  set  her  own  dexterous 
fingers  to  the  knot.  For  that  other  soul  had 
also  her  pride,  and  disdained  to  be  rejected, 
knowing  nothing  of  the  Sirens  or  their  acknowl- 
edged office  under  Fate.  Her  honest  wrath 
triumphed  over  all  his  subtlety,  as  at  length, 
outraged  beyond  conciliation,  she  went  from 
him,  in  the  silence  of  her  departure  making 
the  fine  protest  of  her  life.  The  shock  of  that 
abandonment  almost  saved  him:  could  he 
but  have  followed,  she  might  have  carried  him 
with  her,  an  emigrant  to  some  new  land  of 
promise.  But  the  Sirens  were  at  hand  to  hold 
him  back ;  their  disespousing  music  sounded 
in  the  empty  house  ;  he  went  out  in  a  cloud  of 
it,  unrepenting.  The  Russians  compare  true 
love  to  a  golden  cup,  which  may  be  crushed 


The 
golden 
cup. 


64 


SIRENI CA 


The 
golden 
cup. 


but  never  broken ;  and  they  say  that  however 
roughly  it  be  used,  by  tender  care  it  becomes 
once  more  all  that  ever  it  was.  But  that  is 
only  true  of  simple  loves ;  these  only  can  be 
made  whole,  as  they  were  before  the  blow.  All 
the  rest  are  too  intricately  graven,  or  too 
lavishly  enriched  with  enamel  or  with  gems, 
ever  to  win  back  their  first  form  or  the  old 
harmonious  tones.  The  delicate  and  various 
work,  once  impaired,  may  not  be  restored  when 
the  hand  that  created  them  is  gone,  or  the  fur- 
nace that  fired  them  once  extinguished.  The 
cup  of  this  man's  love  was  thus  rich ;  it  was 
therefore  beyond  repair.  He  left  it  crushed 
behind  him,  and  went  his  way  to  become  a  pre- 
tender for  invisible  thrones,  and  to  sit  by  the 
hearth  of  his  own  no  more.  By  diligence  he 
contrived  almost  to  forget  the  former  peace ; 
but  only  because  his  life  was  now  absorbed  in 
storms  of  change ;  there  was  in  it  none  of 
the  old  long-pausing  sweetness  which  wakes 
remembrance,  but  in  place  of  it  such  calm  as 
broods  at  the  heart  of  cyclones  and  is  ringed 
with  furious  waters.     He  remained  homeless 


SIRENIC A 


65 


after  he  left  that  echoing  house.     The  Sirens 
do  not  suffer  homes. 

There  was  another  household  where  two 
together  heard  the  music,  just  when,  by  a 
trained  coincidence  of  purpose,  they  seemed 
to  have  found  the  true  secret  of  contentment 
and  a  clear  path  to  fortune.  They  had  been 
strenuous  beyond  belief ;  but  now  they  were  as 
two  dreamers  on  a  farm  of  tares,  with  all  their 
barns  emptying.  Little  had  they  cared,  if 
only  their  moods  might  still  have  accorded.  But 
often  the  joys  and  pains  of  their  new  state 
were  so  perversely  timed  that  when  one  was 
with  Hope  upon  the  clouds,  the  other  was 
dungeoned  below  with  Despair ;  their  spirits  so 
seldom  moved  as  one,  that  they  might  have 
been  divorced,  for  all  the  comfort  they  had 
of  union.  It  was  the  comedy  of  enchantment, 
as  that  other  case  the  tragedy.  Sometimes, 
indeed,  their  moods  and  inspirations  would  for 
a  short  while  fall  together,  and  then  they  were 
like  children  who  have  drunk  a  strange  milk, 
and  are  wild  with  fears  or  delights  incompre- 
hensible to  others.     They  amazed  all  who  had 


The  farm 
of  tares. 


66 


SIRENI C A 


The  farm 
of  tares. 


The 

enchanted 
mill. 


known  them  in  their  sobriety ;  but  they  were 
harmless  to  all  save  themselves ;  for,  as  the 
Elizabethan  said,  not  everyone  that  sucketh 
a  wolf  is  ravening.  While  they  themselves 
rejoiced,  their  friends  could  have  wept  over 
these  consonant  raptures  and  despairs ;  they 
saw  in  them  too  clearly  the  aggravation  of 
a  fate  heavy  enough  without,  and  an  impetus 
to  a  course  that  needed  none.  And,  since  the 
Sirens,  less  kindly  than  the  gods,  will  not  aid 
those  whom  they  love  to  die  young,  this  pair 
has  lived  on  to  forget  that  they  ever  knew  a 
calmer  lot.  They  are  a  sorrow  or  a  diversion 
to  their  neighbourhood,  according  as  the  hearts 
of  those  who  regard  them  are  hard  or  pitiful. 
Their  estate  is  become  a  byword :  there  never 
grew  such  tares. 

And  then  there  was  a  poor  man  who  was 
caught  by  the  music,  going  to  the  mill  one  late 
winter  morning.  It  seemed  to  be  only  a  sound 
of  birds  calling  out  of  the  darkness ;  and  it 
took  him  wholly  unawares.  After  that  day  the 
great  revolving  belts  that  hummed  about  him 
at  his  work  ceased  to  deaden  his  soul  as  before, 


SIRENIC A 


67 


but  called  it  into  new  wakefulness ;  they  were 
so  changed  that  they  might  have  been  the 
music  of  the  spheres.  He  lost  time  listening 
to  them  ;  he  earned  less ;  his  credit  fell  with 
his  overseer  and  comrades,  the  one  suspecting 
him  of  brooding  mischief,  the  others  writing 
him  down  a  madman.  For  a  time  he  seemed 
irresolute  what  key  to  strike  in  answer  to  that 
strange  music.  At  first  he  was  enraged  at  the 
injustice  which  kept  him  moiling  in  a  maze  of 
wheels  and  cogs,  while  so  many  had  freedom 
for  thought  and  fancy;  but  gradually  he  per- 
ceived in  that  machinery  a  perfect  plant  for 
the  manufacturing  of  the  dreams  he  loved, 
there  being  no  place  known  to  him  so  favour- 
able to  this  as  the  mill,  and  no  hours  so  won- 
derful as  some  of  those  which  he  passed  in  its 
walls.  For  other  men  it  might  produce  com- 
modities or  wages;  but  to  him  it  gave  at 
rare  moments,  in  overflowing  measure,  things 
unsaleable  and  splendid,  so  that  by  degrees  the 
suspicious  mood  left  him  and  he  abandoned 
thoughts  of  enmity  to  oafs  and  ruffians.  As 
years  went  by,  the  principle  of  his  existence 


The 

enchanted 

mill. 


68 


SIRENICA 


The 

enchanted 
mill. 


became  more  and  more  a  mystery  to  those 
about  him ;  it  seemed  to  remove  ever  further 
from  their  understanding  into  unsearched 
deeps  of  the  man's  being,  as  in  the  aged  the 
life  shrinks  into  far  physical  recesses  where 
even  death  is  perplexed  and  slow  to  find  it. 
Something  other  than  his  labour  was  wearing 
him  to  a  shadow ;  his  look  seemed  that  of  one 
anxious  before  the  time  and  listening  for  a 
curfew  at  noonday.  He  was  negligent  of  him- 
self, and  would  often  have  starved  but  for  those 
of  whose  presence  about  him  he  seemed  but 
half  aware.  This  man  also  lost  the  peace  of 
his  home ;  it  became  to  him  a  tent  in  Kedar, 
a  place  for  the  sleep  of  weariness,  and  housing 
visions  less  well  than  the  dream-factory  with  its 
booming  music.  His  own  folk,  in  the  wisdom 
of  the  simple,  took  some  witchery  for  granted, 
and  let  him  be,  according  to  his  own  desire  of 
being.  They  endured  his  unprofitableness  as 
a  judgment,  and  lived  on  less  to  cover  the 
damage  of  the  visitation.  If  times  were  bad, 
they  might  give  him  a  hard  word  j  but  their 
common  way  was  to  excuse  him  to  each  other 


SIRENIC  A 


69 


by  nods  and  winks  silently  exchanged  behind 
his  back.  For  all  that  they  did  to  mar  him,  he 
might  have  been  always  happy ;  but  the  mis- 
chief lay  in  his  own  breast  where  the  Sirens' 
song  had  brought  it.  Fair  weather  or  foul,  he 
would  walk  leagues  of  Sundays  over  fields  and 
hills,  and  along  the  brown  river,  coming  back 
so  tired  that  he  would  be  late  at  the  mill  gate 
next  morning.  Sometimes,  in  the  prime  of 
the  year,  he  would  disappear  for  days,  return- 
ing with  the  look  of  a  conspirator,  or  of  a  spy 
fresh  from  Eldorado.  Dejection  followed, 
until  they  urged  him  back  amid  the  machinery, 
which  in  time  reconciled  him  to  a  continuance 
of  life.  So  year  in  year  out  they  kept  him 
somehow  at  work,  and  a  roof  over  his  head,  until 
some  shock  of  mental  change  laid  him  dead 
among  them  with  his  secret  undiscovered. 

So  many  there  are  whose  lives  are  thus 
forfeit  at  a  beck,  that  sometimes  a  doubt  creeps 
into  the  mind  whether,  after  all  is  said,  the 
loud  genius  of  this  age  triumphs,  or  whether 
the  Sirens  begin  once  more  to  gain  on  the  world. 
Is  it  so  sure  that,  in  this  stour  and  welter  of 


The 

enchanted 
mill. 


The 

Citadel  of 

Noise. 


7o 


SIRENICA 


The 

Citadel  of 

Noise. 


confused  hopes,  we  fare  better  against  the 
magic  than  the  Greeks  with  their  lucid  scheme, 
their  fine  positive  convention  ?  There  have 
been  so  many  strategies,  and  none  final  yet  j 
so  often  the  Sirens  have  heard  tell  of  their  own 
death.  'T  was  thought  the  Renaissance  killed 
them,  overbrowing  them  with  sheer  pride  of 
life.  But  they  came  again,  until  once  more 
the  eighteenth  century  held  them  at  wits'  length 
by  outworks  drawn  like  the  lines  of  Vauban. 
Each  period  of  resistance  passed,  the  one  like 
glory  of  youth,  the  other  like  an  accomplished 
prime  ;  shall  this  dynamic  genius  of  ours  bring 
a  more  lasting  conquest?  It  has  achieved 
great  things;  but  perchance  we  expect  of  it 
what  no  human  power  can  assure,  letting  our- 
selves hope  too  fondly  without  cause.  For  it 
seemed  to  come  to  us  as  an  undreamed  relief, 
a  god  of  the  machine,  proclaiming  the  life 
mechanical ;  it  drowned  the  lament  of  Werther 
and  the  tumid  voice  of  Manfred  with  such  a 
burst  of  sound  that  we  fancied  the  reign  of  all 
insidious  arts  at  an  end  for  ever  and  a  day. 
Man  committed  his  handicrafts  to  wheels  and 


SIRENICA 


7i 


pistons ;  he  steamed  to  his  goal ;  he  filled  the 
earth  with  clangour,  bandying  his  discords 
across  ever  vaster  space,  until  no  sound  which 
held  of  music  was  like  to  survive  the  unanswer- 
able cacophony.  Here  at  last  seemed  final 
safety;  the  earth  reverberant,  Romance  protest- 
ing in  all  metres  to  gods  and  men,  and  cast 
beyond  appeal.  But  in  all  this  heyday  the 
sanguine  world  forgot  once  more  the  character 
of  the  adversary.  That  pertinacity  which  the 
logic  of  the  Hellene  could  never  rebut  was  not 
to  be  quelled  by  din.  The  Sirens  studied  the 
new  warfare ;  Ligeia  sent  forth  a  carrying 
voice  to  penetrate  the  central  tumult.  Our 
increased  immunity  against  bewitchment  may 
prove  but  a  bare  assumption  ;  for  souls  are  still 
everywhere  decoyed,  and  of  those  most  visibly 
enchanted,  many  are  taken  in  the  central  bruit, 
snatched  from  the  inviolable  citadel  of  noise. 
The  world  goes  on — more  fortune  to  the  roar 
of  it — and  the  multitude  does  not  perceive  the 
loss,  each  vanishing  unmarked  as  a  man  may 
drown  in  a  splashing  crowd  of  bathers.  But 
the  watchful  grow  uneasy,  doubting  the  worth 


The 

Citadel  of 
Noise. 


72 


SIRENICA 


The 

Citadel  of 
Noise. 


of  the  new  violence.  To  them  it  seems  that 
the  chosen  guardians  are  no  longer  a  sure 
defence  ;  the  ears  of  Cerberus  relax,  the  goose 
gives  up  the  Capitol.  And  looking  out  upon 
a  world  of  gathering  discontent,  they  wonder 
if  it  were  not  well  by  some  eclectic  skill  to 
unite  the  schemes  of  all  the  combative  ages, 
and  insinuate  a  Greek  temperance  amid  these 
turbulent  forces.  They  begin  to  fear  that  no 
system  yet  essayed  shall  wholly  avail ;  they 
would  combine  the  best  of  each,  to  attain  the 
one  possible  success,  a  resistance  obstinate  as 
the  attack.  For  the  Sirens  will  always  sing, 
and  many  will  always  hear,  and  haply  all  that 
is  effected  by  our  thunderclaps  is  to  make  the 
hearing  harder. 


VI 


Egyptians 

of  the 
wayside. 


The  Sirens  sing,  and  the  victims  of  a  chance 
are  urged  beyond  the  endurance  of  their  mor- 
tality ;  they  grow  unquiet  as  the  sea  tossing 
beyond  the  last  shore  under  clouds  like  visible 
forms  of  sorrow.     They  cannot  be  resigned ; 


SI RENICA 


73 


the  world  is  not  their  friend,  nor  the  world's 
law ;  they  murmur  even  against  a  better  juris- 
diction. Over  the  pages  of  the  very  Scriptures 
dance  minims  and  quavers  of  a  music  which 
never  accorded  with  that  text,  till  the  solemn 
rubric  sinks  out  of  sight  beneath  them  as  a 
stone  under  rippling  water.  They  are  poor,  if 
to  desire  unattainable  things  is  poverty ;  they 
are  mad,  if  a  despair  of  peace  is  madness. 
They  do  not  find  the  cynic's  wish  fulfilled,  that 
the  chains  in  this  gaol  of  the  world  should  be 
warmed  for  the  delicate  among  mortal  pris- 
oners. Seduced  into  a  pursuit  of  visions,  they 
may  not  dream  of  quietness  ;  they  must  ever  be 
computing  prospects,  or  making  estimate  of 
their  strength.  The  athlete,  living  for  the  day 
of  trial,  is  not  more  harassed  than  these,  for 
whom,  as  for  the  Stoic,  life  is  rather  a  wrestler's 
than  a  dancer's  practice.  The  ruled  existence, 
whether  of  religion  or  of  science,  refuses  to 
them  its  thrice-blessed  complacencies.  They 
are  not  content  to  treat  with  Infinity  by  dele- 
gation, or  learn  of  the  deep  at  second  hand 
from  the  Delian  divers  of  theology.     It  is  not 


Egyptians 

of  the 
wayside. 

U 

,1 


74 


Egyptians 

of  the 
wayside. 


SIRENIC A 


given  them  to  find  tranquillity  either  in  the 
daily  ritual  or  in  those  appeasing  exercises  of 
induction  with  which  some  natures  would 
replace  the  exercise  of  faith.  The  sameness  of 
set  devotion  irks  them.  Science  repels  by 
exaggerated  claims  ;  it  is  a  practical  system  of 
unrealities  ;  and  they  cannot  prefer  the  special- 
ist's fenced  acre  to  the  old  Limitless  of  Anaxi- 
mander.  Religion  itself  they  may  have,  but 
unruly  and  individual,  steeped  in  poetry  to  the 
fabric  of  its  articles,  unsoothed  by  external 
acts,  indifferent  alike  to  the  manuals  of  sound 
doctrine  or  the  cordials  of  the  belief  which  ails. 
They  must  feed  their  souls  after  their  own 
way,  like  those  idiorhythmic  monks  on  Athos 
who  provide  meats  for  themselves,  and  will  not 
be  gathered  in  the  common  refectory.  Though 
they  long  sorely  for  a  part  in  rites,  and  the  solace 
flowing  from  these,  the  fatal  music  always  finds 
them  out  in  the  churches,  stealing  between 
Cantores  and  Decani  until  the  spirit  which  was 
almost  soothed  to  acquiescence  rebels  again 
and  is  made  incredulous  of  its  peace.  They 
would  bestow  all  their  goods  for  a  ritual  which 


SIRENIC A 


75 


would  compel  to  rest,  some  discipline  of  hard 
rule  enforced  by  an  Ironside  in  doctrine ;  but 
when  they  seem  to  have  found  the  one  system 
heaven-sent  for  their  need,  it  fails  them  upon 
the  trial ;  and  there  comes  to  them  the  ancient 
fear  that  he  who  may  love  no  human  being  per- 
fectly shall  never  attain  the  love  of  God.  The 
Sirens  sing,  and  all  proves  vanity.  Remains 
the  sweet  well-being  of  aspiration  as  Augustine 
knew  it,  with  the  brightness,  the  fragrance, 
the  caressing  presences  by  which,  in  elect 
hours,  humanity  heightens  all  which  it  under- 
goes ;  glories  of  the  dear  earth  carried  heaven- 
ward by  the  adventuring  soul.  That  rare 
emotion  will  sometimes  seem  more  near  attain- 
ment; but  it  is  personal  to  the  individual 
nature,  and  tires  with  its  weakness ;  it  has  no 
strength  of  strands  like  the  bond  of  a  confed- 
erated worship.  The  thin  thread  is  snapped 
continually ;  and  though  it  may  be  tied  again 
and  again,  it  is  a  string  of  knots  swaying  in  the 
wind,  with  no  support  for  heaviness.  And 
the  ordered  knowledge  of  facts  has  no  better 
comfort.     For  learning  too  wide  for  communi- 


Egyptians 

of  the 
wayside. 


76 


Egyptians* 
of  the     ' 

wayside. 


SIRENIC A 


cation  estranges  from  men ;  and  a  narrow 
learning,  though  it  make  for  happiness,  is  often 
so  closely  shut  to  sentiment  that  it  chills 
the  enchanted  mind.  In  the  lairs  of  subdivided 
knowledge,  chascun  dans  sa  chascuniere,  each 
with  God's  universe  all  to  himself,  dwell  those 
who  have  solved  that  final  problem  to  their  sat- 
isfaction, and  learned  to  bury  the  Infinite 
below  the  Finite  where  it  shall  never  disturb 
them  more.  These  also  are  happy ;  the  place 
of  the  Sirens'  liegemen  can  never  be  with  these. 
He  and  his  kind  are  as  the  Egyptians  of  the 
highway  who  tarry  for  a  night  under  the  clipped 
garden-hedges ;  but  are  driven  on  with  the 
morning,  hag-ridden  souls,  misprising  the  given 
good,  and  pursuing  on  hurt  feet  the  marsh- 
light  of  their  illusion.  Forever  following,  for- 
ever thwarted,  dreaming  all  and  fulfilling 
nothing,  they  would  long  for  death,  were  it  the 
indisputable  end  of  ends.  But  death  too  is 
suspected  of  them  as  no  last  issue,  itself  a 
phase  in  the  processes  of  change,  a  vagrancy 
continuing  into  another  world  the  deception 
born  in  this,  where  arch-achievement  is  of  trifles 


SIRENIC A 


77 


only,  and  nothing  that  is  real  or  great  is  ever 
utterly  done. 

And  even  the  exalted  paths  of  contemplation 
are  not  true  ways  of  escape ;  though,  with  a 
refinement  of  their  first  cruelty,  the  Sirens  will 
suffer  one  slave  here  and  another  there  to  steal 
far  along  them  and  dream  for  a  moment  of 
manumission.  The  soul  of  a  sensitive  cast  they 
will  let  climb  from  height  to  height  of  perverse 
and  delicate  mislife,  until  it  is  grown  almost 
too  fastidious  to  endure  the  ways  of  earth; 
then,  upon  the  very  hour  of  its  absorption  into 
the  Infinite,  they  send  their  song  up  to  it,  to 
draw  it  back  to  action  and  to  itself.  Such 
usage  they  meted  to  Amiel,  a  soul  unserviceably 
fine  like  a  vessel  of  rare  glass  made  long  ago 
in  a  caprice  by  a  cunning  master  in  Murano. 
Broken  by  the  handling  of  the  rough  world, 
buried  deep  under  mounded  sorrows,  he 
decayed  to  a  marvellous  iridescence,  beautiful 
with  fugitive  and  delinquent  splendours.  A 
vessel  from  which  none  ever  drank  sustaining 
draughts,  but  thin  potions  of  disillusion,  elixirs 
of  a  bewildering  despair.     For  him  there  was 


Amiel. 


78 


SIRENIC A 


Amiel. 


at  last  but  one  joy,  to  mark  the  audible  stream 
of  time  and  the  flowing  downward  of  universal 
being.  All  else  that  men  call  delight  lost  for 
him  its  pertinence  and  sweetness  ;  in  this  alone 
he  found  oblivion  of  many  sufferings.  While 
this  endured,  the  sorrow  of  his  sterility  was 
fainter  to  him  ;  he  knew  suavity  of  release  such 
as  the  wounded  and  the  sick  may  know  when 
the  siege  of  physical  pain  is  raised,  and  in  the 
passing  away  of  agony,  a  film  of  ease  floats 
over  the  stilled  consciousness.  Qui  scrutator  est 
majestatis  opprimetur  a  gloria.  The  beatific 
vision  had  spoiled  his  sight  for  all  that  was 
nearer  and  more  human  ;  when  the  radiance  of 
Infinity  faded  round  him,  he  beheld  forms 
of  men  as  through  a  telescope  reversed,  ants 
of  the  wayside,  unworthy  of  his  regard  to  whom 
all  immensity  lay  open,  and  the  sound  of  roll- 
ing worlds  was  a  familiar  thing.  His  thought 
flowed  away  in  soft  profusion  ;  the  banks  that 
once  held  it  were  left  unstrengthened  and  the 
sluices  unrepaired,  until  at  last  it  had  no 
strength  more  for  human  service  and  was 
evaporated  in  a  lifeless  waste  of  sand.     Born 


SIRENICA 


79 


with  all  fine  instincts  of  affection,  intending 
faithful  comradeship,  he  forsook  them  without 
knowing  the  betrayal.  Personality  grew  pale 
to  him  ;  he  lived  aloof,  disenamoured  of  appear- 
ances, a  shadow  belated  in  embodiment.  Yet 
even  this  man  was  called  back  again  and  ever 
again  that  he  might  taste  the  full  bitterness  of 
vanity;  even  this  man  with  his  voice  that 
whispered  of  entranced  worlds,  like  a  tired  wind 
dying  into  the  heart  of  wintry  forests. 

For  the  hard  enchantresses  will  give  men 
over  to  the  falsest  hopes,  letting  them  dream 
even  the  Eastern  dream  of  reabsorption  into  the 
eternal  being.  They  give  them  to  see  the  celes- 
tial Buddha  in  the  clouds,  the  Lord  of  the 
Measureless  Light,  the  Deliverer  who  redeems 
out  of  passion  all  with  a  pure  heart  calling  ten 
times  upon  his  name.  They  suffer  them  to 
approach  the  delicate  hands  used  to  benedic- 
tion ;  they  leave  them  almost  at  the  foot  of  the 
lotus-throne.  It  is  the  most  subtle  of  all  their 
cruelties.  For  there  is  in  the  Eastern  dream 
a  peace  which  Hellas  herself  did  not  imagine, 
the  passionless  calm  which  in  the  grey  hours 


Amiel. 


The 
Measure- 
less Light. 


8o 


SIRENIC A 


The 
Measure- 
less Light. 


the  soul  desires  more  than  anything  in  earth 
or  heaven.  There  is  in  it  that  which  even  the 
Christian  hope  but  imperfectly  assures,  since 
after  personal  redemption  some  old  agony  of 
the  several  life  might  revive  in  an  immortal 
body.  But  should  not  the  soul  be  absolved  of 
all  this  fear,  and  all  that  menace  be  removed 
from  her  timeless  prospect,  if  she  obeyed  the 
bidding  of  those  mild  eyes  and  made  the  ten- 
fold invocation  ?  The  heaven  of  forms  and 
contours  once  abandoned,  there  should  be  no 
peril  of  relapse,  but  lenient  influences,  oblivion, 
deep  peace,  a  chastity  of  imperishable  light. 
There  are  moods  in  which  the  countenance  of 
Amitabha  can  say  more  than  the  lit  face 
of  Hermes,  leader  of  souls,  more  than  the 
brows  of  the  Christ  of  Pity.  At  such  times, 
when  the  feet  have  strayed  out  far  from  all 
companionship  and  seem  almost  brought  to  the 
flaming  cincture  of  our  world,  the  calm  exotic 
presence  rises  upon  the  dark  as  the  lord  proper 
to  an  impending  exile ;  it  persuades  us  by  a 
natural  authority  into  treason,  until  then  feared 
more  than  death.     But  he  whom  the  Sirens 


SIRENIC A 


81 


hold  under  their  enchantment  may  never  enjoy 
the  promise.  Before  the  invocation  has  passed 
his  lips,  their  voices  come  to  him  again,  the 
golden  mist  dissolves  ;  the  august  shape  is  lost 
in  a  formless  tide  of  light.  And  thereupon 
the  spirit  is  drawn  back  to  a  life  made  harder 
by  this  dream,  half  initiate  now,  and  chilled  at 
the  thought  of  the  puny  strength  in  which  once 
it  had  taken  its  pride.  It  is  dismayed  by  vast- 
ness,  and  abased  beneath  the  starry  heaven, 
having  less  hope  than  before  that  the  power 
which  controls  the  galaxy  should  regard  an 
individual  life  here  among  men  in  the  corner  of 
a  minor  star.  With  the  scope  of  dismay 
enlarged,  it  is  condemned  once  more  to  fret 
within  the  infinitesimal  self,  discovering  a 
deeper  vanity  in  all  things  ;  the  kingdoms  of  the 
earth  are  paltry  plots,  their  histories  a  tale  of 
notches  on  a  stick.  Man  passes  away  like  the 
shadow  of  a  shade,  like  all  that  imagination 
may  conceive  most  frail  and  inessential ; 
shall  he  not  be  suffered  to  pass  unvexed, 
in  the  silence  which  is  the  one  privilege  of 
shades  ? 


The 
Measure- 
less Light. 


II* 


82 


SIRENIC A 


Edens 
lost. 


But  whether  the  cruelty  be  simple,  or  refined 
to  this  last  subtlety  among  oriental  visions, 
none  who  have  borne  the  yoke  can  shake  it  off, 
or  ever  be  wholly  free  again.  There  is  a  story 
that  in  their  first  night  of  exile  Eve  and  Adam 
returned  to  Eden,  picking  their  way  in  the 
darkness  where  the  angel  seemed  to  sleep,  his 
sword  glowing  upon  the  ground  beside  him. 
But  when  they  came  into  the  garden,  it  was  all 
changed.  The  creatures,  that  very  day  caressed 
and  fawning,  now  rose  with  bared  fangs  and 
threatened  them.  The  trees  were  still  bowed 
with  fruit,  but  when  they  plucked  and  would 
have  eaten,  they  tasted  only  ashes.  One  tree 
alone  fulfilled  its  promise  :  it  was  the  tree  of 
knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  which  had  given 
them  understanding.  Upon  its  branches  the 
orbed  and  ruddy  fruit  hung  yet  luscious,  as 
when  the  serpent  praised  it.  They  plucked  and 
plucked  again,  biting  to  the  core  in  the  hope 
of  slaked  thirst  and  sated  hunger.  But  from 
the  moment  that  they  ate,  hope  fled ;  a  wintri- 
ness  touched  Eden,  and  they  felt  it  more  deso- 
late to  them  now  than  the  outer  world  of  exile. 


SIRENIC A 


83 


They  were  dismayed  at  the  embittering  of 
kindly  and  familiar  things ;  the  snarjing  of  great 
beasts  grew  louder,  unquiet  footsteps  closed  in 
narrowing  circles  round  them.  They  looked 
into  each  other's  eyes,  and,  without  a  word  or  a 
backward  glance,  went  out  again  into  the  place 
of  weary  labour.  And  now  they  did  not  walk 
delicately  as  they  approached  the  angel ;  they 
went  with  natural  steps,  as  knowing  the  worst, 
carelessly  and  without  heed  of  danger.  He  saw 
them  depart,  as  he  had  seen  them  come ;  but 
his  hand  was  holden,  that  they  might  see  with 
their  own  eyes  and  accept  the  judgment. 
When  they  were  gone  forth,  he  rose  to  his  feet 
and  girded  on  his  extinguished  sword.  Dawn 
was  breaking  j  his  work  was  done.  Absolved 
now  of  his  ungrateful  duty,  he  lightly  spread 
his  wings,  and  soaring  out  over  the  four  rivers 
and  the  garden  of  God,  was  lost  at  one  flight 
in  the  clouds  of  morning.  There  is  no  restor- 
ing of  the  protected  Eden  which  to  each  was  as 
a  royal  garden  of  youth  before  the  Sirens'  song 
was  heard  ;  there  is  only  such  brief  return,  that 
the  soul  may  assure  herself  of  her  state  and 


Edens 
lost. 


/ 


84 


SIRENIC A 


Edens 
lost. 


see  the  lees  in  the  cup  of  destiny.  If  in  young 
life  the  Sirens'  music  float  towards  you  over 
still  waters,  put  the  helm  about  while  it  is 
yet  an  uncertain  sound ;  let  those  whose  ears 
are  closed  lash  you  to  the  mast  until  the 
echoes  are  heard  no  longer.  Beware  lest  for  a 
moment's  heedlessness  your  days  be  consumed 
away,  lest  kindred,  fatherland,  and  friends  be 
lost  to  you,  and  your  bones  lie  bleaching  upon 
that  shore.  Believe  it  not,  when  pride  or 
flattery  would  persuade  that  you  are  of  a  force 
to  meet  the  insidious  danger  ;  none  are  of  that 
force,  not  even  the  heroes  and  the  slayers  of 
many  dragons.  If  fortune  offers  peace  of  hap- 
piness, with  all  its  estimable  solid  gain,  its 
neighbourhood  of  minds  and  profitable  com- 
munions, why  go  the  lonelier  way,  consorting 
with  shadows,  feeding  upon  vanity  of  dreams  ? 
You  are  like  to  become  among  men  as  the 
poplar  among  the  trees,  too  sensitive  to  dwell 
in  commonality,  whitening  the  wayside  with  a 
floss  that  none  shall  spin.  Be  wise,  return 
among  the  happy  of  mankind  for  whom  laws 
are   framed   and    politics    constructed ;   who, 


\ 


SIRENIC A 


85 


trenching  themselves  within  a  pale  and  taming 
down  ambitions,  receive  their  certain  wages  in 
the  weighed  gold  of  tranquillity.  For  they  only 
hold  a  safer  course  who  have  never  heard  that 
call,  they  whom  the  meditator  in  old  Norwich 
knew,  souls  "  having  not  the  apprehension  to 
deplore  their  own  natures,  and  framed  so  far 
within  the  circumference  of  hope  that  the  wis- 
dom of  God  has  necessitated  their  content- 
ment." 

But  if  the  die  is  cast,  and  the  Imagined 
Better  Thing  spoil  for  you  even  the  good  thing 
in  the  moment  of  achieving,  do  not  therefore 
cease  from  action  ;  that  were  to  lose  the  life 
for  the  uncertain  promise, propter  vivendicaus as 
perdere  vitam.  Remain  among  men  ;  fear  that 
inhuman  solitude  where  the  influence  of  sweet 
charities  is  never  known.  The  Sirens  will  not 
forbid  a  forced  activity  in  the  interlude  of  their 
enchantment ;  they  will  rather  approve,  know- 
ing that  it  keeps  the  nature  in  mobility  and 
prepared  for  the  effort  which  they  will  demand 
again  in  their  hour.  Use  therefore  all  means 
to  be  doing,  lest  a  sick  weariness  of  deeds,  that 


Edens 
lost. 


The 
Second 
Best. 


86 


SIRENIC A 


The 
Second 
Best. 


old  acedia  or  staleness  of  the  uninterested 
mind,  creep  into  the  blood  of  the  great  veins 
and  make  despair  a  habit.  Use  every  art,  use 
even  jealousy  itself ;  it  is  marvel  what  a  clean 
envy  without  malice  will  do  for  one  who  in  his 
heart  despises  the  things  of  competition.  If 
it  cannot  bring  him  joy  of  victory,  it  will  yet 
disturb  indifference,  and  though  the  service  of 
the  whole  heart  is  of  the  greener  virtue,  there 
is  a  good  sap  in  the  half.  That  is  an  old  fallacy 
which  rejects  all  but  the  intense  glow  before 
the  deed ;  "with  half  my  heart "  is  not  always 
a  fool's  device,  but  often  the  word  of  considered 
wisdom.  It  is  a  principle  not  despised  by  the 
preacher  of  holiness,  who  knows  the  labyrin- 
thine world,  and  the  flesh  in  its  presumption ; 
it  is  better  to  toil  for  a  dim  spark,  like  the 
savage,  painfully  revolving  his  drill  for  fire,  than 
to  languish  weary  days  in  cold  and  idleness. 
"  Perform  the  outward  action  of  fervour,"  says 
St.  Francis  of  Sales,  "  though  the  fervour  itself 
be  lacking."  It  is  a  principle  to  which  even 
genius  has  been  beholden.  Many  a  true  artist 
sees  the  forms  of  his  high  fancy  displaced  by 


SIRENIC A 


87 


crowding  of  baser  shapes,  and  common  life 
encroaching  upon  him ;  but  he  does  not  cease  to 
work;  he  paints  on,  that  he  may  keep  his 
soul  fluent  and  alert  for  the  return  of  more 
noble  visions.  Much  he  may  do  at  such  times 
unworthy  of  his  repute,  but  he  lives  watching, 
and  seizes  the  good  hour  upon  the  wing.  Do 
likewise  upon  your  lower  plane ;  cold  though 
you  be  to  deeds,  yet  keep  doing.  Be  busy  over 
measurable  things,  be  occupied  with  temporali- 
ties and  outputs ;  their  hold  is  stringent 
to  the  soul,  like  a  tightening  of  the  belt  upon 
the  body  in  hunger.  At  the  worst  there  is 
some  gain  from  this  feint  of  sustenance;  the 
nature  bears  up  longer  against  life's  hard- 
ship. And  sometimes,  by  a  high  chance, 
the  secondary  drab  thing  is  transanimate 
and  made  other  than  itself;  the  insignifi- 
cant glows  with  meaning ;  the  trivial  becomes 
great  with  wonders  of  suggestion.  So  a  foul 
pane  will  flame  with  red  of  opals  against 
the  setting  sun ;  an  iron  swung  against  a 
grate  will  chime  like  the  Bourdon  of  Notre 
Dame. 


The 
Second 
Best. 


88 


SIRENICA 


The  half 
heart. 


"  But,"  he  who  doubts  may  say,  "  I  who 
desire  the  purple  distances  and  follow  after 
things  delicate  and  intangible,  how  should  I 
hew  this  withered  wood  and  draw  this  stagnant 
water  ?  How  should  I  practise  a  gross  envy 
for  things  unenviable  of  my  soul  ?  How  should 
I  rival  Pandect,  the  man  of  Law,  of  Futurus 
of  the  Exchange,  or  the  ungentle  scholar  Pret- 
erite ;  how  cope  with  Agricola,  my  country 
neighbour,  who  lives  intent  upon  byres  and 
barns,  and  is  enraptured  by  a  vision  of  fatted 
cattle  ?  Shall  I  leave  the  glory  of  the  far 
heavens  for  the  nice  alignment  of  a  furrow,  or 
forget  the  aerial  thought,  reckoning  a  crass 
weight  of  swine  ?  I  could  not,  for  Nestor's 
counsel,  compete  for  prizes  or  for  solidities  of 
profit ;  as  well  bid  me  prefer  to  Turner's  skies 
the  earth-loving  heavens  of  a  Dutchman's  land- 
scape." M  Protest,  but  try,"  the  counsellor 
will  answer ;  the  hour  comes — you  will  wonder 
at  its  swift  feet — when  the  lawyer's  reputation 
will  be  to  you  for  a  reproach,  and  the  scholar's 
name  for  an  incitement ;  when  your  sleep  will 
be   troubled   by   the    desire    to    outcultivate 


J 


SIRENIC A 


89 


Agricola,  and  the  fingers  too  delicate  for  rough 
use  will  tingle  for  a  grasp  of  his  plough.  While 
the  envy  endures,  the  poppies  in  the  corn  and 
the  sorrel  in  the  hay  will  be  to  you  no  more, 
as  in  enchanted  hours,  the  final  cause  of  all  the 
field  ;  but  as  base  weeds  to  the  farmer,  marring 
all  the  prospect  of  good  harvest.  Therefore 
indulge  clean  envy  well ;  let  it  run  out  its  course. 
These  jealousies  and  fervours  are  healthful  for 
you ;  they  counter  the  detachment  to  which  you 
were  else  abandoned ;  you  were  in  a  fair  way 
towards  madness ;  they  will  keep  you  human. 
The  things  that  awaken  them  have  not,  be  it 
confessed,  the  virtue  of  the  true  gods  or  the 
perdurable ;  yet  they  are  useful  idols  of  a  mean- 
while ;  they  will  possess  the  mind  until  the 
lodestar  shines  again.  They  shall  hold  your 
spirit  to  such  an  exacting  round  as  most  you 
need,  averting  it  from  wild  thoughts  and  the  last 
irreligion  of  despair.  When  the  song  sounds 
to  you  again,  and  the  shadow  of  the  gnomon 
falls  once  more  upon  the  hour  of  divine  impos- 
sible things,  you  shall  not  soar  or  dream  the 
worse  for  this  service  in  the  house  of  bondage  ; 


The  half 
heart. 


9° 


SIRENIC A 


The  half 
heart. 


The 

Unknown 

Worse. 


nor,  when  the  flight  ends,  shall  the  mind  have 
aught  but  benefit  from  that  alternation  of 
concern  amid  sound  things  coveted  and  prac- 
tised. What  if  it  be  never  yours  to  seek  them 
with  a  whole  heart?  Give  what  dimidiated 
zeal  you  may,  and  bear  with  them  in  good  faith 
for  their  nearness  to  humanity.  And  though 
sometimes  they  are  done  in  a  stupor,  as  a  man 
might  labour  the  morning  after  ruin,  or  between 
shocks  of  earthquake,  this  very  insensibility 
has  charm.  There  is  a  pleasant  recklessness 
in  desperate  hours,  which  have  their  own 
sufficiency,  and  may  hold  the  spirit  almost  upon 
the  verge  of  happiness. 

For  without  the  common  tasks  and  feasible 
plain  things  of  competition  the  world  is  too 
hard  for  the  Siren's  bondman,  who  must  wait 
often  in  weariness  for  the  return  of  the  soul's 
desire.  The  intervals  between  his  joys  are  too 
long  for  still  endurance ;  remoter  sounds  and 
happenings  of  a  life  not  truly  shared  become 
intolerable  to  the  spirit  held  motionless  and 
expectant ;  it  is  in  silence  that  the  water  mad- 
dens, heard  dripping  upon  the  stone,  in  the 


SIRENICA 


91 


stillest  night  that  the  heart  is  frozen.  Without 
the  anodyne  of  planned  activity,  he  will  be 
drawn  down  into  the  gulf  that  yawns  for  him : 
there  will  be  nothing  fixed  and  firm  to  stay 
him,  no  handhold  for  his  clutching  fingers.  In 
the  deeps  to  which  then  he  falls  there  is  exist- 
ence, but  not  life ;  there  the  infolded  thoughts, 
lost  to  all  beyond,  flock  inward  upon  them- 
selves ;  or  if  one  dash  out  for  freedom,  a  swift 
memory  will  head  it  back,  as  the  shepherd's 
fierce  dog  rounds  in  the  sheep.  There  is  no 
release  in  swoon,  for  when  consciousness 
returns  it  flows  more  darkly,  as  to  one  fallen 
asleep  in  the  pain  of  evil  tidings.  At  the 
moment  of  such  awakening,  the  heart  is  felt  to 
sink ;  all  sinks  with  it  and  falls,  pressed  beneath 
a  descending  cloud  of  misery,  down  and  ever 
further  down  into  those  bottomless  depths 
where  the  soul  implores  annihilation  and  is  not 
answered.  There  is  known  the  suspended  fear 
of  the  unknown  Worse,  which  is  before,  behind, 
and  round  about,  an  incalculable  infesting 
presence.  The  brain  seems  quickened  for  one 
end  only,  to  revolve  misery ;  in  the  dim  light, 


The 

Unknown 

Worse. 


92 


SIRENICA 


The 

Unknown 

Worse. 


Centrip- 
etal 
force. 


the  eye  is  aware  of  things  moving,  glimmering 
forms  of  concealed  but  certain  fear,  "  glancing, 
shifting  mortal  woes  "  luminous  with  their  own 
faint  and  sinister  light.  And  sometimes,  in 
the  most  dreadful  hour,  a  lordlier  form  of  terror 
passes,  formidable  and  slow,  as  the  Angel  of 
the  Abyss  might  fly  over  his  gulf,  and  all  sounds 
be  stilled  but  the  beat  of  his  darkening  wings. 
Tremendous  hours,  incommunicable  between 
soul  and  soul,  unimaginable  after  escape  as 
tortures  of  other  beings  in  a  world  remote  from 
ours,  yet  always  near  to  many,  high  and  low, 
learned  or  without  letters,  to  this  man  who 
governs  a  State,  or  that  man  who  goes  about 
a  little  business,  and  nearest  of  all  to  those 
who  have  heard  the  Sirens'  song.  If  there  be 
any  labour  which  may  avert  these  hours,  God 
bring  it  to  the  hand  and  send  it  done. 

The  victim  who  would  not  thus  go  under 
must  use  his  intervals  in  a  fury  and  wrath  of 
action.  He  must  use  them  with  such  fierce 
diligence,  that  the  work  which  he  has  to  show 
at  the  end  may  absolve  him  from  the  charge  of 
vanity.     He  must  stifle  his  inner  conviction 


SIRENIC A 


93 


of  an  absurdness  in  these  tasks,  and  win  an 
approval  from  the  general  judgment  which  may 
never  be  accorded  by  his  own,  in  secret  won- 
dering that  any  such  things  should  avail,  yet 
illogically  willing  to  be  justified.  He  will  not 
have  worked  amiss  if  this  his  second  best 
appear  his  whole  ambition,  for  he  will  have  won 
in  spare  hours  a  testimony  of  good  service 
which  shall  stand  him  in  lasting  stead ;  he  shall 
be  habilitated  before  others,  and  somewhat 
ease,  by  a  softly-cheating  fallacy,  the  pain  of 
inachievement  which  gnaws  within  him.  It  is 
well  for  him  to  have  known  the  compelling 
attraction  of  mankind,  which,  like  the  attraction 
of  earth  for  material  things,  is  ever  operative 
upon  the  soul.  For  as  the  earth  draws  the 
torn  leaf,  and  will  have  it  at  last,  however  long 
the  winds  toss  it  up  or  whirl  it  in  the  air,  so 
every  soul  yields  to  this  indrawing  strength, 
which  is  an  indefeasible  power,  constant  as 
gravitation  itself,  and  as  quietly  exerted.  The 
wonderful  path  of  man  was  made  straight  by 
common  deeds ;  our  forefathers  inaugurated  the 
world's  course  with  nothing  better ;  all  through 


Centrip- 
etal 
force. 


94 


SIRENIC A 


Centrip- 
etal 
force. 


In  ipsis 
floribus. 


the  ages  they  strove  with  each  other,  doing, 
getting  and  exchanging,  by  concussion  and 
hard  argument  of  life  no  less  than  by  its  friendli- 
ness, joined  indissolubly  to  each  other.  Often 
the  strife  was  violent,  but  it  welded  ;  there  was 
chaos,  but  the  good  ground  formed ;  it  solidi- 
fied ;  it  has  remained.  In  the  underworld  of 
forgotten  time  the  fancy  sees  customs  and 
beliefs  overlie  and  mingle  with  each  other ;  it 
is  as  if,  in  a  dream  of  creation,  you  watched 
the  earth  molten,  and  strata  of  ancient  rocks 
flow  to  their  first  repose.  The  plain  forces 
worked  out  their  way ;  the  world  settled  to  plain 
life  ;  it  is  so  that  humanity  was  shaped  into  its 
greatness.  Our  common  days  continue  the  old 
heroic  effort ;  who  would  not  drudge  between 
two  dreams  for  a  share  of  them  ? 

Happy  is  the  life  which  is  not  uttered  all  in 
parenthesis,  but  spoken  out  full  in  rounded 
periods.  It  is  amenable  in  the  hour  of  weari- 
ness to  the  obvious  and  approved  recreation. 
Does  he  who  lives  it  tire  awhile  of  his  unmemo- 
rable  activities?  There  are  the  reliefs  of 
nature,  of  art,  of  religion,  each  fashioned  for  his 


SIRENIC A 


95 


convenience  in  usum  deficientis.  But  the  Sirens 
do  not  permit  any  victim  of  theirs  such  light 
release.  Though  he  is  exhausted  to  a  faint- 
ness,  they  will  weigh  out  to  him  each  remedy 
of  the  worn  soul  as  it  were  by  the  drachm  and 
scruple  ;  like  the  chirurgeon  at  the  pulse  of  the 
racked  prisoner,  they  watch  for  the  hour  when 
the  heart  shall  prove  of  a  torturable  strength ; 
and  stinting  it  of  rest  to  the  last  point  of  safety, 
compel  it  to  the  hard  assay  once  more.  And 
they  are  too  fine  to  end  the  respite  by  any 
visible  brutality ;  that  does  not  assort  with  their 
subtle  purpose.  They  softly  overcloud  and 
delicately  blight,  until  the  mind  becomes  aware 
of  a  disillusion  imparted  it  knows  not  whence 
or  how.  Each  mercy  thins  from  its  fullness  into 
a  dissatisfying  vapour,  as  if  imperceptibly  it 
thwarted  itself  to  serve  them ;  unconscious  of 
the  process  used  upon  him,  the  sufferer  awakes 
in  a  new  strength,  but  with  an  abated  confi- 
dence. Neither  religion,  nor  art,  nor  nature 
is  frank  to  him,  but  each  has  an  insincerity  of 
second  intent ;  which  he  resents  the  more,  in 
that  he  went  to  them  like  a  man  foredone  in  a 


In  ipsis 
floribus. 


IH 


96 


SIRENIC A 


In  ipsis 
floribus. 


great  exhaustion,  desperately  trustful,  and  in 
such  evil  case  as  only  a  malignance  could 
abuse.  Nature  herself  is  suborned  against 
him  ;  even  in  her  plenary  hour  she  inexplicably 
fails,  changing  without  seen  cause  the  motherly 
to  the  novercal  face.  In  her  festival  of  high 
summer  she  prepares  so  many  glories  that  the 
mind  is  held  rapt  in  one  long  pleasure  of  sur- 
prise, until  all  suspicion  is  drowned  in  the  bright 
flood.  Like  healing  like,  this  new  enchant- 
ment seems  to  prevail  over  the  old ;  the  earth 
laughs  doubt  away.  The  lime-tree  is  fragrant 
on  the  air  j  the  honeysuckle  crowns  the  lustrous 
holly  and  the  briony  the  hedges  ;  the  hop-bines 
sway  in  the  breeze,  reaching  out  after  each 
other  from  pole  to  pole  ;  in  the  cottage  gardens 
the  great  lilies  ranged  before  the  larkspurs 
image  the  white  clouds  upon  the  sky  above 
them.  Invisible  gnats  keep  a  sustained  mur- 
mur above  ;  a  distant  wain  makes  for  the  barn 
behind  which  the  fresh-ploughed  land  runs 
back,  like  a  faintly  rippled  sea  bounding  a 
peninsula  of  trees.  All  floats  on  the  summit 
and  crest  of  full  perfection  ;  it  is  the  ripe  hour 


SIRENIC A 


97 


of  all  things.  No  sign  of  autumn  appears  yet 
among  the  leaves ;  in  the  gardens  the  time  of 
the  sad  asters  is  far  ;  the  nights  have  breathed 
balm  upon  them  after  every  sunset,  and  there 
is  still  no  breath  of  decay.  Shall  he  believe 
that  Nature  betrays  him  with  a  kiss  of  peace, 
so  that  the  mind  forgets  its  warfare,  living  for  a 
while  in  a  pathetic  wonder,  like  a  child  used  to 
blows  and  suddenly  caressed  ?  Yet  she  does 
betray  ;  the  Sirens  teach  her  their  art  and  force 
her  to  do  their  bidding.  And  often  she 
must  do  it  under  that  cloudless  heaven  in  the 
third  hour  after  the  meridian,  which  is  the  day's 
autumn,  the  fatal  hour,  unbearably  steeped  in 
sorrow.  For  then  an  English  afternoon  may 
wear  that  evil  brilliance  of  the  tropic  under 
which  men  know  themselves  mocked,  and  the 
heart  is  made  empty,  and  despair  flows  into 
the  soul  which  love  has  left  unguarded ;  and 
many,  asked  in  what  hour  they  have  perceived 
themselves  most  desolate  and  under  Medusa's 
eyes,  would  answer :  "  At  this  hour,  and  upon 
a  summer's  day."  By  such  an  effluence  of 
pure  sadness  the  cruel  end  is  attained,  and  this 


In  ipsis 
floribus. 


98 


SIRENIC A 


In  ipsis 
floribus. 


The 
Sirens' 
own  art. 


serene  heaven  is  used  as  readily  as  the  known 
ministers  of  unrest,  the  unharboured  clouds,  or 
fretting  waves,  or  mists,  or  the  broken  silences 
of  pine-woods  when  the  cones  fall  one  by  one. 
The  voice  of  the  Sirens  is  of  so  divine  a  charm 
that  even  the  mother  of  all  created  things  her- 
self must  do  their  pleasure. 

VII 

The  Sirens  can  trouble  all  the  healing  wells, 
even  the  deep  well  of  Nature.  The  well  of 
Faith  they  disturb  lightly;  they  know  where 
haunt  the  little  breaths  of  sly  heresy  and  noisier 
gusts  of  schism  which  come  suddenly  down  to 
flaw  it.  The  bright  well  of  Art  they  also  trouble, 
causing  it  to  shimmer  from  the  deeps  with  a 
multitude  of  springs  that  bubble  out  of  the  rock 
and  blurr  the  still  reflections  upon  its  face. 
The  painter  must  often  yield  to  their  voice; 
even  the  sculptor  may  not  always  resist ;  the 
architect  cannot  but  obey.  But  the  musician 
anticipates  the  song,  and  seems  almost  to 
catch  it  upon  their  lips.  For  this  is  their  own 
art,  and  formidable  indeed  to  all  who  confess 


SIRENICA 


99 


their  sovereignty.  In  the  perception  of  this 
danger  the  Hellenes  conspicuously  proved  their 
insight,  though  they  knew  nothing  of  the  bow, 
by  which  the  supreme  magic  passes  into  instru- 
ments of  strings.  For  them  there  was  a  peril 
even  in  Terpander's  lyre ;  but  what  dread  had 
not  been  theirs  if  some  god  or  hero  had  taught 
them  this  last  device ;  if  Apollo  on  Parnassus, 
or  Orpheus  in  the  world  of  Shades,  had  drawn 
the  bow  over  the  viol,  as-  Raphael  and  Signorelli 
have  portrayed  them,  unwilling  to  conceive 
the  heaven  or  the  hell  which  could  be  charmed 
without  it.  Music  was  never  safe  for  enchanted 
minds ;  even  for  the  mind  subdued  to  custom 
it  may  be  rife  with  hidden  menace.  The 
Hellene  did  not  err  when  he  sought  to  control 
it  always  in  bonds  of  language,  suffering  it  to 
range  abroad  only  under  guard  of  words,  and 
held  always  within  the  cold  scrutiny  of  reason. 
He  feared  the  imploring  harmonies  which 
entice  into  the  measureless  by  measure,  and 
tempt  the  geometric  mind  out  of  its  fastness. 
Absolute  music,  freed,  like  a  symphony,  from 
constraint  of  words,  he  denounced  as  an  incal- 


The 
Sirens' 
own  art. 


SIRENIC A 


The 
Sirens' 
own  art. 


culable  and  uncivic  power.  For  he  marked 
the  deceitful  art  begin  with  unassuming  notes, 
a  march  of  smooth  plastic  forms  made  audible, 
which  seem  at  first  to  brace  and  temper  the 
spirit.  But  behind  this  stage  he  perceived 
another,  which  threatened  to  destroy  the  man, 
to  waste  away  his  spirit,  and,  in  the  phrase  of 
Plato,  to  cut  out  the  sinews  of  his  soul,  until  he 
should  decline  into  a  feeble  citizen  and  an 
unvictorious  warrior.  Against  these  insidious 
arts  of  decay  he  waged  unremitted  war.  We 
may  smile  at  this  strait  philosophy,  and  at  the 
law  which  would  sanction  none  but  the  Dorian 
style ;  for  to-day  an  agora  will  not  contain  a 
nation,  nor  may  a  people  be  corrupted  in  the 
fleeting  of  an  hour.  We  put  our  trust  in  size, 
and  ask  safety  of  mere  tumult,  which  subjects 
all  music  to  the  distracting  din  of  life.  In  the 
market  and  the  street,  men  cannot  hear  the  fine 
strain  if  they  will ;  securely  multitudinous, 
they  go  their  ways  ignorant  of  danger,  and 
whistling  uncharmed  melodies  down  the  wind, 
where  all  is  merged  with  the  echo*  of  traffic,  or 
dispute,  or  pastime.     But  withdrawn  into  some 


SIRENICA 


still  place  in  some  moving  hour,  the  individual 
is  yet  imperilled ;  and  above  all,  he  whom  the 
Sirens  have  taught  to  hear.  For  him  the  risk 
is  not  less,  but  tenfold  greater.  For  this  art  has 
grown  beyond  the  range  of  Greek  imagination, 
and  the  adventuring  mind  once  thoroughly 
searched  by  it  can  conceive  no  longer  a  limit  to 
its  omnipotence.  When  the  great  musician  of 
modern  Germany  came  to  interpret  the  genius 
of  Beethoven,  he  found  the  master  supreme  in 
this,  that  he  had  transported  music  beyond  the 
aesthetic  beauty  of  rhythm  and  symmetry,  away 
into  her  proper  sphere  of  the  Sublime,  where 
the  mere  form  is  perceived  subordinate  and 
is  beaten  down  under  her  wings.  For  since 
Beethoven,  she  soars  out  into  high  places 
where  the  unaided  reason  is  too  short-breathed 
to  follow ;  she  speaks  a  language  of  divine 
meaning  and  beyond  competence  of  your  ana- 
lysing thought.  In  her  kingdom  there  is  no 
tyrant's  art  of  definition,  no  pedant's  love  of 
marshalled  concepts  ;  the  reason  may  only  pass 
its  borders  exalted  by  the  glow  of  spiritual  fire. 
How  much  more  perilous  is  she  thus  become 


The 
Sirens' 
own  art. 


SIRENICA 


The 
Sirens' 
own  art. 


with  the  glamour  of  high  philosophy  about  her 
name,  and  herself,  as  a  philosopher  has  said, 
auricular  metaphysic  with  incantation  for  half 
her  argument.  Music  is  not  safe  for  you, 
followers  of  the  Sirens ;  look  back  and  recall 
the  dangers  into  which  in  past  years  she  has 
beguiled  you,  and  say  if,  in  the  knowledge  of 
her  power,  you  would  dare  blindly  to  follow  her 
flight.  Remember  how  in  some  hour  when  all 
things  have  consented  to  a  deep  emotion,  the 
control  of  the  very  life  was  lost  to  you ;  not  a 
blow  could  you  have  struck  for  freedom,  as  you 
stood  hearkening  without  help  or  counsel, 
stilled  to  a  voluptuous  helplessness,  drunken 
with  the  joy  of  your  bondage.  Perhaps  in  some 
crowded  place  your  soul  was  clean  taken  from 
your  governance,  or  perhaps  in  the  company 
of  one  other  only ;  taken  it  was,  and  humbled 
until  it  knew  itself  no  more.  As  the  moon  rose 
over  the  fields  of  harvest  I  have  heard  an 
arpeggio  struck  by  invisible  hands,  preluding 
to  a  great  music.  In  the  succeeding  pause  all 
the  mysteries  of  the  hour  and  place  seemed 
gathered  for  an  inspiration  ;  at  last  the  deep 


SIRENICA 


I03 


notes  came  quivering  from  the  strings,  and  all 
that  the  pent  consciousness  embraced  was 
dissolved  into  the  relieving  flood  of  sound. 
Plaintive  chords,  undulant  and  joyous  har- 
monies, they  flowed  out  from  the  brimming 
chamber  over  lawns  and  paths,  meeting  the  sigh 
of  night  as  it  replied  from  the  hushed,  attend- 
ing forest.  In  such  an  hour  what  control  was 
left  to  the  will,  what  discipline  remained  to 
reason  overwhelmed  by  the  surge  of  infinite 
divine  things  ?  When  the  tide  breaks,  the  dyke 
of  reason  goes  down  like  the  ramparts  of  a 
child's  castle  in  the  sand  ;  the  set  ordinances  of 
life  are  annulled ;  the  soul  is  drawn  away  on  a 
celestial  pilgrimage ;  the  call  of  the  Sirens  has 
been  obeyed.  Following  paths  of  wonder,  she 
knows  swift  change  of  joy  and  suffering ; 
she  moves  over  the  formless  waters  of  the 
uncreated,  hovering  in  the  heart  of  the  void, 
drinking  the  crimson  wine  of  dawn  and  sunset. 
Free,  and  glorying,  and  elate  she  wings  over 
the  coasts  of  light ;  she  hears  the  waves  break 
far  below  her,  and  the  winds  moan  by  ;  the  won- 
der of  things  vast  and  infinitesimal  consumes 


The 

Sirens' 
own  art. 


104 


SIRENIC A 


The 

Sirens' 
own  art. 


her,  as  she  floats  dissolved  in  the  trance  of  her 
unincarnate  passion.  Under  that  enchant- 
ment all  the  fabric  of  laws  and  religions  and 
philosophies  is  tossed  away  upon  the  wind,  as 
thistledown  adrift  over  the  meadows.  Nothing 
is  fastheld  more,  or  founded;  all  flows  and 
changes,  descending,  mounting,  approaching, 
withdrawn,  in  regions  dark  with  austere  shad- 
ows, aglow  with  splendours  of  inapprehensible 
light.  They  who  once  adventure  where  these 
things  are,  would  never  exchange  the  starry 
ways  for  the  firm  ground  of  earth,  or  the  cloud- 
walls  for  its  bonded  masonries,  or  for  its  most 
assured  rewards,  the  superb  impossibilities  of 
hope.  When  certain  harmonies  encompass 
them,  they  are  severed  from  the  world  ;  at  each 
return  the  fiery  particles  of  the  soul  are  stirred 
more  deeply.  This  influence  is  an  affection  of 
elements  ;  its  power  is  ultimate,  it  abides.  The 
Russian  mystic  was  not  alone  among  thinkers 
who  in  our  day  have  shared  the  dread  which 
disturbed  the  ancient  world.  But  he  has 
described  the  terror,  well,  confessing  that  the 
music  which  he  had  so  loved  in  youth  became 


SIRENIC A 


105 


at  last  an  art  of  arcane  power,  and  awful  to 
him  in  contemplation.  His  mind  misgave  him 
for  the  dread  of  it.  He  feared  with  a  more 
than  Hellenic  fear. 

By  mastery  of  such  an  art,  aggrandised  to  a 
new  scope,  the  Sirens  are  now  advantaged  in 
the  onset.  It  is  the  first  preparation  of  their 
spell ;  scarce  are  the  words  of  the  magic  framed, 
when  already  the  soul  is  a  yielded  prey.  They 
sing  to  these  new  harmonies  the  old  sweet 
cajoleries  and  bitter  taunts.  "  What  part  have 
you  in  the  reaped  earth,  children  of  the  divine 
unrest  ?  Would  you  turn  from  us  now  ?  would 
you  pretend  forgetfulness  ?  You  on  whose  ears 
the  great  charm  fell,  have  done  with  vile  con- 
tent !  These  among  whom  you  hide  are 
deceivers  of  their  own  souls,  gilding  the  grey 
lead  for  gold.  Come  forth  from  among  them, 
come  forth  far  ;  ascend  to  sight ;  know  ecstasy, 
and  moments  as  the  lit  foam  of  time.  Know 
daring ;  love  the  inordinate  hope ;  unswathe  the 
soul ;  arise.  About  you  murmurs  the  unuttered 
life  which  might  be  spoken,  the  imprisoned  life 
which  might  be  free,  the  obedient  life  which 


The 
Sirens' 
own  art. 


The  song 
renewed. 


io6 


SIRENIC A 


The  song 
renewed. 


need  not  serve.  Have  no  lot  with  serfs.  Let 
the  thought  leap  out;  shake  from  you  all  that 
clings  ;  fling  off  the  encumbering  folds.  Come ; 
for  these  are  cowering  and  remiss  natures, 
clusterers,  afraid  alone ;  slow-thighed  bees, 
clogged  with  their  own  honey,  forgetful  of  the 
tree-tops,  insects  of  the  tended  hive.  Come 
forth  from  them ;  they  are  blind  to  joy ;  their 
life  is  a  dupery,  their  love  a  straitening.  Let 
them  go  in  the  rote  of  the  nether  ease  ;  let  them 
piece  out  cloying  happiness;  their  days  are  a 
dust  and  bestowed  in  vanity ;  the  world  wastes 
the  ages.  Disdain  their  restless  round,  and 
come  far ;  as  the  bird  whirrs  from  the  low 
grass,  come  out  upon  the  great  winds,  clean  as 
the  breath  of  seas.  For  a  while,  when  our 
voices  were  not  heard,  it  was  permitted  to  you 
to  share  their  foolishness,  to  revolve  for  their 
pleasure  and  cheat  sorrow  with  speed,  to  be  the 
toy  of  their  solemn  pastime.  The  top  sleeps 
upon  the  point ;  while  the  game  lasts,  it  is  well. 
But  now  we  are  come  again,  singing  low  and 
clear  and  nigh  you,  cease  and  look  cloudward. 
For  now  the  dreamed  Better  Thing  appears, 


SIRENICA 


107 


and  you  shall  win  to  it ;  from  false  goals  and 
dull  aims  misrevered  you  shall  depart,  you  shall 
soar  out  till  you  look  down  upon  the  hillock 
Olympus.  Know  this,  that  more  worth  is  lost 
by  peace  than  by  passion.  The  quickening  joy 
scathes,  but  have  pride  of  your  scars ;  that 
which  has  not  suffered  does  not  know ;  the 
unwounded  have  not  lived.  Come  forth,  trust 
no  sanctuary  ;  you  are  ours,  and  neither  shrine, 
nor  fortalice,  nor  uttermost  dark  retreat  shall 
divide  us  from  our  own.  Though  you  are 
carried  from  the  verdure  and  the  bloom,  and  the 
thickets  thronged  with  birds;  though  all  be 
gone  which  assuaged  this  servitude,  gentleness 
and  kind  looks  and  caring  voices,  yet  be  not 
dismayed ;  for  we  will  take  the  need  of  them 
from  your  heart  and  set  your  desire  upon  nobler 
sounds  and  presences.  Would  you  shrink  back 
because  men  say  that  to  approach  the  immortal 
is  to  endure  more  pain  ?  And  were  it  even  so, 
what  argument  that  for  noble  natures?  All 
that  is  noble  grows  in  pain ;  as  it  ever  was,  so 
it  shall  be  ever,  till  Fate  get  eyes  or  be  tamed 
to  pity.     Come  then  to  the  life  emulous  and 


The  song 
renewed. 


io8 


SIRENIC A 


The  »ong 
renewed. 


An 
immortal 
Sophistry. 


uncrowned ;  is  there  no  pleasure  of  upward 
strife,  is  not  the  supreme  thing  far  and  half- 
discerned  more  than  the  near  conspicuous 
vanity  ?  If  life  were  a  haunting  of  quiet  and 
green  places,  it  should  satisfy  a  heart,  but  a 
bird's  heart — if  that  were  all  of  life.  And  if  it 
were  a  diligence  of  bearing  loads,  it  would 
suffice  a  mind,  but  an  ant's  mind — if  that  were 
all.  Absolute  whole  life  is  more  than  ease  or 
profit;  it  is  an  ascent  and  a  transcending,  it 
evades ;  it  loves  the  outrance.  He  who  cramps 
it  in  the  press  dishonours  it  with  unfair  misuse. 
We  touch  you  with  shafts  of  golden  sound ;  cling 
to  your  safe  mean  no  more,  but  come  where  the 
high  strains  wander ;  where  the  free  life  wins 
glory  of  health,  and  the  pest  of  ordinance  is 
overcome ;  where  the  unwarded  soul,  without 
sentinel  or  patron,  is  proven  in  the  great  space 
alone.  Come  forth  from  among  them,  chil- 
dren of  Divine  unrest ;  you  on  whose  ears  the 
great  charm  fell,  have  done  with  vile  content." 
With  such  words  they  provoke  the  spirit, 
interfusing  through  the  wild  music  their  own 
irresistible  self.     And  the  bondman  rises  to 


SIRENICA 


109 


obey,  as  Odysseus  rose,  though  long  years  have 
gone  by  since  last  they  sang  to  him.  He  obeys, 
knowing  in  his  heart  they  lie,  but  like  the  wild 
thing  captured,  unable  to  contrive  his  deliver- 
ance. He  knows  that  happiness,  his  birthright, 
is  rapt  from  him  by  a  sleight  of  immortal 
sophistry ;  he  knows  that  the  song  of  freedom 
cozens,  and  the  singers  themselves  are  bond, 
compelled  by  a  fate  which  calls  for  ruin  of  men. 
With  whatever  charm  they  sing,  with  what 
promises  soever  they  entice,  whatsoever  disgust 
with  present  things  their  voice  may  instil,  in  the 
very  hour  of  capitulation  some  instinct  yet  w^ill 
tell  him  that  the  unmysterious  fond  things  are 
best,  the  things  of  every  day,  that  they  alone 
nourish  life,  that  he  was  only  born  to  love  them. 
He  must  rise  ;  he  must  follow.  Yet  among  all 
who  obey  the  call,  scarce  one  but  would  not 
liever  remain,  might  he  pause  to  cast  a  balance 
and  measure  the  need  of  his  own  humanity. 
But  no  briefest  respite  is  accorded  ;  he  is  swept 
away  too  fast  for  the  saving  calculation.  There- 
upon all  regret  for  the  broken  ties  pales  first 
to   affectionate  contempt   and   then   to    cold 


An 

immortal 
Sophistry. 


SIRENIC A 


An 
immortal 
Sophistry. 


The 
poison  of 
Nonacris. 


oblivion,  as  joy  eclipses  happiness,  and  every 
memory  of  calm  delights  is  lost  in  the  splendour 
of  its  appearing. 

For  the  voices  come,  as  to  one  imprisoned  at 
a  desk  memories  of  shore  or  moorland,  per- 
verting the  mind  from  every  covenant  of  duty. 
When  they  are  abroad,  interflowing  with  the 
sounds  of  life,  all  that  was  solid  and  firm  dis- 
solves, all  pomp  and  consequence  is  as  a 
shadow.  While  that  music  still  trembles  in  the 
air,  how  vain  the  homily  of  the  Industrious 
Apprentice  who  rose  to  claim  a  place  upon  the 
dais,  and  sat  in  a  carved  chair,  an  exemplar  to 
unadventuring  souls.  For  such  moralities 
there  is  then  no  room  ;  who  follows  whither  the 
Sirens  call  is  lost  to  the  rich  promises  of  fortune 
and  shall  find  no  promotion  in  the  world.  Lost 
also  to  things  less  dispensable  than  these, 
stayed  from  gladness,  diminished  in  the  heart's 
virtue.  For  the  roots  which  the  heart  throws  out 
to  others  are  weakened  and  die  back;  instead 
of  a  commingling,  there  is  at  first  an  uncertain 
touch  ;  at  last  they  wither,  and  search  no  longer 
after  the  true  food  of  their  life.     The  heart 


SIRENICA 


bewitched  is  made  ungenial ;  only  the  glad  are 
kind.  Even  the  tried  affection  is  dimmed ;  and 
slowly,  as  a  stone  weathers,  the  spirit  darkens 
from  the  old  fidelities.  Like  the  rule  of  some 
rigid  order,  the  service  of  the  Sirens  chills 
human  sympathy  ;  theirs  is  a  sequestering  law, 
too  strange  to  share  with  many.  Every  hour 
of  abandonment,  each  adventurous  escape, 
enfeebles  the  hold  upon  common  life ;  the 
colours  of  love  and  dislike  grow  paler,  as  all  is 
said  to  pale  when  a  long  sickness  draws  to  its 
end,  and  the  soul  is  near  its  passing.  The  sur- 
face of  the  mind  dulls  like  a  mirror  of  silver 
tarnished ;  the  reflections  that  once  played  over 
it  come  no  more ;  it  is  estranged  from  the  old 
light  and  the  moving  images  of  the  world.  To 
one  thus  inhumanly  entreated,  all  men  become 
as  travellers  moving  in  the  next  room  of  the 
inn,  arriving  and  departing,  brought  nearer  or 
removed  by  a  machinery  of  unshared  indifferent 
fates.  His  nature  is  slowly  frozen  ;  a  fatal 
coldness  rises  in  him,  as  from  that  icy  poison 
of  Nonacris  of  which  it  is  fabled  that  Alex- 
ander died. 


The 
poison  of 
Nonacris. 


I  12 


SIRENI C A 


VIII 


The  bond 
of  wild 
want. 


An  old  religious  writer  has  said  that  human 
wants  are  the  true  ligatures  between  God  and 
man ;  had  we  not  wanted,  we  had  never  been 
gratified ;  we  are  bound  by  an  infinite  debt 
because  our  needs  are  without  end.  There  is 
solace  in  this  thought  of  the  soul's  need  as 
bond  between  the  passing  and  the  eternal  life, 
between  that  which  yearns  and  that  which  satis- 
fies ;  it  seems  to  cover  unrest  with  a  grace  of 
divine  protection,  and  confute  that  evil  old 
doctrine  of  the  Envy  of  the  Gods.  None  who 
have  hearkened  to  the  Sirens'  music  but  will  fol- 
low the  argument  thus  far.  But  they  cannot 
stay  within  the  bound  set  by  this  man  of  fortu- 
nate piety ;  it  is  too  near  for  their  extravagance, 
they  must  lend  another  meaning  than  his  to 
infinity  of  desire.  For  how  should  he  know  the 
strange  places  of  half-perception,  the  refuges  of 
the  driven  soul,  the  wastes  of  the  outer  light  ? 
The  very  name  of  infinity  awed  him  ;  his  mind 
shrank  from  the  approaches  of  it ;  he  recked 
too  much  of  many  things  to  be  the  true  guide 


SIRENICA 


113 


of  their  audacity.  The  sheltered  plats  and  bor- 
ders of  his  parsonage  were  never  planted  with 
herbs  of  magic ;  they  stood  thick  with  old-world 
flowers  disposed  about  a  dial,  offering  their 
nectaries  to  the  bees,  stems  to  be  plucked  in  a 
quiet  hour  and  set  in  a  bowl  of  Delft  among 
piled  folios  of  the  Fathers.  But  the  Sirens  lead 
the  steps  among  blooms  of  another  beauty, 
such  growths  as  sprang  from  the  bewitched  soil 
in  Virgil's  garden  of  Avellino,  and  dangerous 
in  the  gathering  as  the  strange  root  man- 
dragora.  Wild  wants,  insatiable  desires,  these 
also  are  bonds  no  less  than  the  sanctioned 
wish  which  in  shamefastness  receives  its  appor- 
tioned gift.  These  also  are  of  divine  descent, 
the  Sirens  say  ;  it  may  not  be  that  they  should 
be  disowned  by  any  god.  For  what  celestial 
name  but  should  lose  nobility  preventing  these, 
which  bid  the  soul  dare  to  forget  her  mortal 
deference,  to  despise  all  gain,  to  leap  out 
beyond  count  of  life  and  profit  ?  The  sweet 
sound  comes,  the  spirit  answers  ;  and  all  molec- 
ular affairs  are  as  the  dust  under  a  lee  when  a 
great  wind  veers  to  scatter  it.    Then  is  the  hour 


The  bond 
of  wild 
want. 


H4 


SIRENIC A 


The  bond 
of  wild 
want. 


Happi- 
ness and 
Joy. 


of  quest  after  invisible  perfections  for  ever 
beyond  seizure ;  of  joy  rewarding  the  pursuit, 
instant  as  swift  flame  and  incomparable  with 
all  other  guerdons.  Joy  wild  and  pure  born  in 
the  purple  of  deep  skies,  consuming  like  a  fire, 
maddening  like  a  potion,  but  of  the  stained 
nature  never  known,  from  the  common  slave  of 
sense  to  Sardanapalus,  Akyndaraxes'  son. 

With  this  joy  the  Sirens  lure  the  impassioned 
soul,  now  exquisitely  troubled,  and  able  no 
more  to  abide  in  the  calm  ease  which  flows  on  a 
curve  and  rounds  to  the  full  circle  of  content- 
ment. With  joy  they  charm  her,  the  glory  of 
stars,  the  flower  of  the  miraculous  heaven.  For 
joy  and  happiness,  confused  in  the  thought  of 
men,  are  in  truth  of  different  kindred ;  from  their 
very  birth  they  are  estranged  ;  the  heart  which 
the  one  frequents  is  often  abandoned  by  the 
other.  To  joy  the  house  of  happiness  is  a  kempt 
place  too  trimly  tended,  ordered  by  unbearable 
wonts  of  peace,  shuttered  and  barred  in  too 
close  a  privacy ;  and  all  that  is  beyond  its  fire- 
light is  lost  to  it  as  the  far  side  of  the  moon. 
It  seems  a  place  of  sedentary  affections  and 


SIRENIC A 


ii5 


imperfect  generosities  ;  the  love  which  pours  a 
mild  ray  through  its  chambers  is  too  placid  for 
ardent  life.  And  to  the  happy,  joy  is  a  strange 
vagrant  spirit,  and  too  wayward  for  their  com- 
pany, a  haunter  of  brinks  and  perilous  verges 
which  are  not  for  guided  feet.  It  passes,  but 
they  keep  close  within  ;  none  who  would  know 
still  days  would  unbar  for  such  a  visitant :  a  pro- 
found instinct  bids  them  fear  it.  Happiness 
is  all  things  to  all  men  ;  a  thousand  definitions 
should  not  describe  its  nature.  It  is  suffi- 
ciency for  the  day ;  it  is  the  peace  of  the  good 
conscience;  it  is  the  virtuous  use  of  intellectual 
energies  ;  it  is  the  wealth  of  nations  ;  it  is  any 
heart's  ease  or  all,  if  its  range  be  but  short  and 
its  aim  feasible.  The  happy  are  they  who  reach 
their  want,  who  achieve,  who  set  hand  to  those 
things  only  which  are  done  utterly  and  to  the 
end,  who  complete  their  work  in  a  good  conceit 
of  their  sufficiency.  Their  secret  lies  in  the 
sage  limit  of  attempt  and  the  assurance  of  swift 
fulfilment.  From  Hesiod  to  Burns,  all  who 
have  sung  happiness  have  gone  to  the  country- 
side for  the  exemplar  of  it,  where  the  horizon  of 


Happi- 
ness and 
Joy. 


n6 


SIRENIC A 


Happi- 
ness and 
Joy. 


all  work  is  near,  and  each  task  all  feasible 
and  visibly  completed.  "  What  a  fine  life  the 
countryman's,  who  ploughs  his  field  all  day 
with  his  pair  of  oxen,  and  at  eve  brings  them 
home  and  feeds  them,  and  eats  himself,  and 
sleeps  soundly."  The  marrow  of  happiness  is 
in  this  strait  activity ;  the  unknown  Italian  of 
the  fifteenth  century  who  put  it  so,  set  forth  the 
truth  for  all  ages ;  the  aphorist  did  but  para- 
phrase when  he  said  that  he  is  happy  who  is  fit 
for  one  thing  only,  and  does  it.  Light  are  the 
footsteps  of  the  Hours  which  have  their  ways 
in  the  furrows ;  this  was  well  sung,  O  Hellene  ; 
no  feet  have  moved  lighter,  or  perhaps  shall 
move  while  man  loves  a  harvest.  For  the 
scattered  seed  grows  and  ripens,  it  is  reaped 
and  threshed  ;  the  foreseen  gift  is  present  and 
the  long  labour  crowned.  Raise  the  plane  of 
life,  change  the  occupation ;  something  in  all 
whole  satisfaction  will  still  tell  of  the  old 
Georgic  straitness.  Happiness  is  the  use  that 
wears  patiently  to  a  comfort ;  it  is  the  habit  of 
the  heart's  ease  ;  it  moves  upon  the  path  which 
millions   have   trodden    smooth.     But   joy  is 


SIRENIC A 


117 


elate,  immoderate,  ungovernable ;  it  flies,  and 
is  uncontained  within  any  bound.  Happiness  is 
current  gold ;  worn  in  the  markets  and  multi- 
plied in  transaction.  Joy  is  neither  weighed  nor 
minted ;  its  revenues  are  beyond  exchange, 
visionary  treasures  of  desire  laid  up  in  the 
clouds  and  eternally  unimparted.  Happiness 
is  still  a  wine  ;  there  is  a  fume  upon  joy,  which 
seethes  in  the  cup  and  is  beaded  about  its 
brim ;  the  draught  of  it  exalts  the  soul  of  him 
who  drinks,  until  the  world  falls  far  from  him  as 
the  earth  below  rapt  Ganymede ;  he  looks  down, 
and  the  great  globe  is  gone  from  beneath  him 
like  a  thing  rejected.  Happiness  is  of  a  hempen 
texture;  joy  is  woven  of  the  stuff  of  dreams; 
it  shall  be  rent  by  the  lightest  wing  that  flutters, 
of  so  fine  a  gossamer  is  its  substance.  Joy 
is  of  instants,  born  and  dead  in  one  darting 
point  of  time  ;  happiness  is  of  hours,  and  com- 
pleted upon  the  long  rounds  of  leisure.  Hap- 
piness is  of  silver  afternoons.  The  mother  of 
joy  is  night ;  it  wells  golden  out  of  the  dark- 
ness ;  it  is  auroral,  it  cometh  in  the  morning. 
Its  voice  rings  like  the  bells  which  bear  its 


Happi- 
ness and 
Joy. 


n8 


SIRENICA 


Happi- 
ness and 
Joy. 


name.  In  a  moment  it  is  rung  out  upon  the 
dull  world  ;  it  calls  to  far  winds  and  rides  upon 
them  into  the  distance  ;  it  returns,  and  the  pro- 
found air  is  Tumorous  with  the  gathering  music. 
Sometimes,  upon  a  day  of  festival,  you  may  hear 
the  ringers  mass  their  rippling  peal  into  sudden 
intermitting  chimes,  each  flung  upon  the  air  in 
one  sonorous  fall,  a  cataract  of  sound  that 
breaks  upon  the  city  and  races  far  over  its 
roofs,  until  at  last  the  intervals  are  lost,  and  all 
is  tremulous  with  echoes,  flying,  following,  and 
overtaken.  The  high  tower  rocks  to  the  toss- 
ing bells ;  the  mind  is  shaken  with  pulsing  of 
delight.  Could  joy  flow  suave  as  happiness, 
who  would  not  abandon  all  for  it  ?  Nothing 
but  this  were  then  the  world's  desire.  But  the 
magical  wild  power  is  fitful  and  unsustained ; 
it  troubles  and  alarms ;  hearts  are  not  healed 
but  seared  at  its  touch,  and  the  bereaving  hours 
which  end  that  rapture  are  often  grey  with  deso- 
lation. It  sets  aflame,  and  roaring  out  its  life, 
leaves  ember  and  ash  to  die  down  in  a  freezing 
night.  In  this  dread  usage  it  does  not  spare 
or  attemper ;  the  fierce  change  rives  at  the  very 


SIRENIC A 


119 


life,  which  is  worn  down  by  them  and  at  each 
return  diminished.  In  tropic  mountains,  where 
night  frosts  follow  upon  the  glare  of  raging  suns, 
the  peaks  are  splintered  by  the  fury  of  the  suc- 
ceeding heat  and  cold.  Fragments  fall  from 
them  in  the  high  solitudes ;  their  flanks  are 
scarred  with  wounds ;  more  is  reft  in  short  years 
from  their  adamantine  substance  than  in  quiet 
centuries  from  the  slopes  of  English  hills. 

What  virtue,  then,  has  this  unsteadfast  crea- 
ture that  it  should  rival  happiness  ?  It  is  vari- 
ous and  rich  in  change  and  is  so  commended 
to  mutable  humanity.  Its  transience  quickens ; 
the  nature  grows  more  sensitive  to  fine  subtle- 
ties of  transformation,  and  is  enriched,  as  by 
an  art  of  delicate  experience.  The  mere  passing 
in  or  passing  out  becomes  in  itself  such  a 
delight  as  the  steady  follower  of  happiness,  in 
his  plain  issues  and  returns,  perhaps  may  never 
know.  Without  warning  given,  in  the  dreariest 
hour  there  steals  upon  the  mind  a  sense  of 
strain  relaxed  ;  a  film  draws  over  it ;  all  softens 
and  is  clothed  with  colour.  It  is  an  amnesty, 
a  sudden  glory  of  release,  as  when  the  iron 


Happi- 
ness and 
Joy. 


Peri- 
pheral 
things. 


S  I  R  E  N  I  C  A 


Peri- 
pheral 
things. 


Arctic  ground  yields  to  the  sun  of  spring,  and 
is  pierced  with  the  tender  roots  of  flowers. 
These  gliding  passages  of  sense  come  at  last 
to  be  desired  for  themselves  ;  they  have  a  sev- 
eral existence  and  awaken  their  own  delight. 
No  longer  dreaded  as  vain  delays,  they  add  to 
joy  a  certain  sweetness  of  suspense,  like  the 
false  dawn  which  checks  the  day  to  make  it 
fairer.  The  day  comes  at  last,  more  beautiful 
for  the  prelude ;  so  joy  breaks  and  flows  free 
through  things,  quickening  the  soul  with  a  more 
marvellous  flame.  And  joy,  being  vast  in  range, 
makes  the  athlete  soul ;  for  it  summons  to 
divine  hardship  and  leads  into  the  far-unfolding 
spaces  entered  of  none  save  those  stripped  of 
paraments  and  trinkets.  He  who  would  find 
it  must  penetrate  the  heart  of  deserts  not  to  be 
crossed  by  the  encumbered  spirit.  "  Nudos 
amat  Eretnus"  said  St.  Jerome ;  and  there  is  but 
one  truth  for  the  saint  and  the  bewitched.  In 
these  great  spaces,  where  joy  is  made  manifest, 
the  Soul  is  central  to  a  horizon  upon  all  sides 
remote,  yet  felt  as  an  immediate  and  embracing 
presence ;  the  void  that  divides  her  from  it  is 


SIRENIC  A 


121 


lit  with  a  familiar  splendour.  On  the  borders 
of  immensity  she  is  searched  by  influences 
fresh  from  the  spring  of  days,  streaming  in  upon 
her  and  meeting,  as  it  were,  in  a  foam  of  light. 
This  far-sent  radiance  becomes  her  life  ;  by  the 
magic  of  it  she  is  drawn  away  from  earth,  from 
care,  from  home  and  kindred.  All  loveliness 
flows  away  into  unattainable  things ;  these  only 
are  vital  to  her ;  for  these  alone  she  cares  to 
live.  The  sense  and  reason  are  fused  in  a 
strange  passion,  revealed  at  last  as  that  "light 
intellectual  fulfilled  in  love "  which  is  the 
supreme  boon  of  mind. 

Such  love  of  far  peripheral  things  is  their 
help  whom  the  Sirens  have  sent  wandering 
away  beyond  the  pales  of  happiness.  It  is  often 
poured  first  into  the  heart  by  a  half-uttered 
voice  of  nature,  learned  upon  the  sea,  made 
actual  by  a  journey  into  wildernesses.  The 
sense  of  this  strange  union  is  bracing  as  keen 
air ;  there  is  a  sharpness  upon  it  as  of  the  early 
spring;  its  offspring  are  born  in  danger  and 
endure  but  a  little  while,  like  the  crocus-flowers 
aflame  under  the  clenched  unsheltering  buds. 


Peri- 
pheral 
things. 


"Dalle 
piu  altt 
stelle." 


SIRENIC A 


"  Dalle 
piu  alte 
stelle." 


This  farness  of  descent,  this  affinity  with  the 
distance  as  the  one  thing  needful,  absorbed 
the  mind  of  Michelangelo ;  it  is  the  gospel  of 
his  poems.  With  a  persistence  born  of  reve- 
lation, he  tells  it  in  phrases  uneasily  combined, 
labouring  at  an  art  which  was  not  his  own, 
chiselling  painfully  at  the  words  which  resist 
him  to  the  end  like  granite.  Often  the  springs 
of  fancy  seem  to  fail  him  ;  he  repeats  to  weari- 
ness his  similes  of  ice  and  fire.  But  the  mes- 
sage is  clear  at  last ;  the  sense  breaks  through 
with  a  concise  and  noble  utterance  :  "  from  the 
stars  of  the  uttermost  height  comes  the  splen- 
dour down ;  to  these  it  draws  the  heart's  desire  ; 
this  is  that  which  is  named  love.',  In  these 
lines  his  faith  is  all  confessed  ;  his  soul  is  eased 
of  a  burden  ;  he  has  said  the  say  for  which  he 
believed  the  sculptor  called  to  become  a  poet. 
They  shine  through  the  obscure  approaches 
like  the  light  of  altars  down  glooming  aisles ; 
they  bring  the  gold  of  daffodils  into  a  chamber 
dark  with  winter.  These  words  have  comfort 
when  sadness  or  privation  of  joy  troubles  the 
enchanted  spirit;  when,  too  rapt  even  to  love, 


SIRENICA 


123 


it  is  driven  beyond  the  ways  of  happiness, 
or  goes  aside,  reluctantly  averse,  from  the 
hearths  of  consolation.  Their  echoes  impart 
new  steadfastness ;  like  the  Lucretian  strain 
to  which  they  bear  affinity,  they  rebind  in 
a  high  allegiance.  At  such  times,  it  is  with 
them  as  with  the  traveller,  when  in  the 
charmed  night-silences  he  sits  alone  under 
eastern  stars.  The  dearest  memory  grows 
pale  to  him  then  as  the  moonlit  sands;  and 
whatever  fulfilment  life  holds  is  summed  in 
that  perfected  hour  of  solitude.  As  in  some 
exercise  of  skill  a  man  cares  no  more  for 
rudiments  when  once  he  is  advanced  toward 
mastery,  but  is  intent  only  upon  the  diffi- 
cult and  subtle  problems  of  the  game,  so  he 
who  is  estranged  from  near  affections  is  blest 
in  delicate  and  faintest  contacts  to  which  only 
the  trained  sense  may  make  some  imperfect 
answer.  He  is  environed  of  things,  exquisite 
and  starry.  He  seeks  that  which  is  beyond 
plain  apprehension  and  yet  suffers  pursuit ;  he 
is  impassioned  at  a  light  breath,  as  the  poplar 
quivers  when  all  other  trees  are  still.     The 


"Dalle 
piu  altt 
stellc." 


124 


SIRENIC A 


"Dalle 
piu  altt 
stelU." 


spark  falls  ;  the  life  grows  quick ;  it  flames  out 
its  ecstatic  hour.  For  the  desire  of  intellectual 
beauty,  however  tenuous  it  seem,  is  passion 
still ;  a  violence,  a  force,  a  fury,  a  vibration.  It 
descends  from  the  clouds;  like  the  Love  of 
Sappho's  unforgotten  verse,  it  comes  to  the 
earth  in  purple  ;  it  pulses  with  life  as  it  comes. 
Transitory  it  may  be,  unabiding,  unknown,  and 
never  all  possessed.  Yet  such  is  the  high 
charm,  that  its  memory  lives  when  all  else  dies ; 
it  shall  endure  through  the  greater  pain  and 
overpass  the  profounder  gulf ;  they  who  obey 
it  may  not  be  tempted  by  a  more  certain  wage 
to  another  service.  Though  they  suffer  more 
and  longer,  the  reward  is  worth  the  anguish ; 
and  they  would  not  change  its  moment  for  a 
thousand  placid  morrows  of  fruition.  For  them 
the  glow  which  is  intense  and  perfect  is  never 
of  the  foreground ;  it  is  like  fire  of  sunset 
among  the  hills,  where  the  best  is  always  furth- 
est, and  upon  the  last  verge  of  sight.  The  near 
range  holds  its  several  shapes  and  colours,  with 
fields,  trees,  and  farms  yet  all  distinct ;  the 
second  yields  up  its  varied  hues  and  forms,  and 


SIRENIC A 


125 


looms  unfeatured,  steeped  to  the  extreme  rims 
in  azure  shadows  ;  from  the  third  the  darkness 
and  the  mass  are  already  gone,  and  all  is  dis- 
solved in  pearly  light.  But  beyond,  the  last 
range  lifts  peaks  that  burn  like  topaz,  now  seen, 
now  hidden  again,  as  the  clouds  move  about  it, 
molten  in  a  surge  of  fire.  Such  is  the  loveliness 
which  their  souls  pursue,  ethereal,  apparitional ; 
and  even  so  it  passes,  lost  in  an  amazing  con- 
fluence of  splendours  before  which  a  nearer 
cloud  spreads  at  last  its  darkening  veil. 

Joy  works  alone ;  it  asks  no  contribution ; 
it  avoids  the  pomps  and  standards,  and  all  the 
unneeded,  vain  necessities  of  spoiled  lives. 
The  solitary  place  is  sufficient  for  its  habitation  ; 
it  is  freed,  as  the  Stoics  would  have  said,  from 
the  tyranny  of  external  things.  It  does  not 
recede,  like  happiness,  with  lost  friends  or  van- 
ished youth,  when  the  ways  of  life  darken  to 
the  bereaved,  like  deep  lanes  poured  full  with 
evening  shadows.  They  who  have  known  it 
once  may  possess  it  always.  For  them  there 
shall  be  no  sadness  of  surrender,  but  that 
ecstasy  of  endeavour  shall  be  prolonged  to  the 


"Dalle 
piu  alte 
sidle." 


Joy 
steadfast. 


126 


SIRENIC A 


Joy 

steadfast. 


Joy 
fugitive. 


end.  They  shall  not  see  the  pleasures  which 
they  have  loved  come  down  like  autumn  leaves, 
or  sigh  over  the  meagre  cheer  of  age,  remem- 
bering lost  activities.  For  the  tree  of  their  life 
shall  not  slowly  rust  to  dull  hues,  but  flush  to 
a  swift  splendour  in  the  woods  of  autumn,  until 
at  last  it  is  absorbed  into  one  clear  flame,  as 
though  it  should  not  die,  but  glow  into  annihi- 
lation. While  the  mind  performs  its  office,  and 
the  wedlock  of  body  and  soul  holds  undis- 
solved, there  shall  still  be  scope  for  dreams  not 
unimpassioned,  the  soul  shall  yet  be  quickened 
with  the  unquenchable  fire.  So  long  as  the 
eye  has  light,  the  heart  shall  yet  be  enamoured 
of  arduous  hopes,  as  in  the  blazing  days  of 
manhood.  And  in  the  distance  there  shall  be 
surer  glimpses  of  that  which  youth  but  half 
perceived  ;  the  things  which  were  invisible  but 
not  vain  shall  seem  now  to  pause  for  them,  the 
flash  shall  linger;  a  steadfast  sight  shall  per- 
ceive the  vision. 

Yet,  as  in  wonder-tales  the  most  splendid 
gift  of  the  magician  is  often  granted  upon  some 
hard  terms,  not  hidden  or  kept  back  by  the 


SIRENIC A 


127 


giver,  but  forgotten  awhile  by  the  receiver  in 
the  bravery  of  first  possession,  so  it  has  ever 
been  with  this  gift  of  joy.  It  is  lit  with  starry 
lights  and  touched  with  amazing  fires ;  but  it 
remains  of  a  supernal  nature  beyond  their 
expression  or  control;  it  is  ever  to  be  redeemed 
by  pain.  None  shall  summon  it  at  will,  or  keep 
it  continually  under  guard ;  it  will  not  outstay  its 
hour  even  for  tears  or  passionate  supplication. 
It  has  not  that  great  selfless  quality  which 
makes  happiness  seem  best  when  most  divided  ; 
it  is  incommunicable,  and  may  not  be  shared 
at  will  with  others.  Only  souls  of  an  imperial 
genius  may  bid  it  abide  or  persuade  it  to  return 
when  they  list;  for  them  alone  will  it  consent 
to  linger  under  the  regard,  as  they  follow  from 
height  to  height,  proving  the  wings  of  the  soul. 
A  Shelley  or  a  Schubert  will  come  radiant  to 
earth  with  it,  and  holding  it  visible  awhile,  send 
it  homing  to  the  stars  where,  by  the  gods'  grace, 
he  came  upon  it ;  a  Wordsworth  draws  it  into 
the  circle  of  his  hills  and  gives  it  rest  in  the 
arbour  of  a  cottage  garden.  These  wizards  had 
some  word  of  power  with  which  to  call  it  down, 


Joy 
fugitive. 


128 


SIRENIC A 


Joy 

fugitive. 


The 
recipe  of 
fern seed. 


potent  as  charms  of  old  magic,  Agla,  or  Anani- 
zapta,  or  Tetragrammaton  the  Unutterable 
Name  ;  they  knew  some  spell  by  which  it  should 
seem  to  be  imparted ;  for  them  alone  it  out- 
stayed the  cockcrow  and  knew  serene  hours  of 
day.  But  for  all  the  rest  there  is  no  such  high 
control ;  the  music  out  of  the  spheres  escapes 
them  when  most  they  love  it ;  the  starry  form 
is  consumed  away  in  a  quick  jealousy  of  dark- 
ness. Yet  even  the  residue  is  riches ;  that 
which  fleets  from  sight  is  steadfast  in  remem- 
brance. There  is  pleasure  from  the  flying 
shadows  of  clouds  upon  the  fields,  though  none 
may  trace  their  outline,  or  stay  them  for  a 
moment  as  they  pass. 

The  Sirens  are  cruel  mistresses,  yet  often 
royal  in  largesse.  They  teach  the  spirit  to  beat 
off  beleaguering  circumstance ;  they  discover 
to  it  sovereign  simples  against  oppression,  dit- 
tany for  great  wounds  and  infallible  charms  of 
fernseed.  The  soul  to  which  they  call  will  travel 
on  the  prompting  of  an  instant ;  it  can  be  out 
and  away  while  others  only  dream  of  stirring ; 
before  heavy  lids  are  rubbed,  it  is  departed.    It 


SIRENIC A 


129 


knows  no  frontiers  which  might  bar  escape ; 
it  observes  the  will  of  none,  and  waits  the 
hazards  of  no  caprice.  In  a  well-known  pas- 
sage, Sterne  has  told  how  literature  could  carry 
him  far  from  the  sad  ways  of  life ;  how,  in  a 
moment,  when  the  path  became  too  rough  or 
steep  for  his  feet,  he  was  off  it  upon  soft  lawns 
and  places  scattered  with  rosebuds  of  delight. 
Such  deliverance  the  Sirens  also  promise  ;  and 
if  in  the  regions  whither  they  entice,  the  flowers 
are  flames  and  the  lawns  immeasurable  fields 
of  space,  there  is  the  same  elation  of  escape, 
there  is  the  same  joy  over  the  filed  gyves  left 
behind.  They  sweep  away  the  ambitions  which 
conflict  with  freedom  or  make  subservient  to  a 
patronage  ;  the  soul  which  they  have  taught  to 
dream  shall  take  no  heed  of  jealous  judgment ; 
the  treasures  which  it  enjoys  are  of  a  divine 
abundance  and  beyond  the  talons  of  the 
harpies.  It  avoids  the  torment  of  Reputation, 
besieged  upon  its  pinnacle,  and,  like  that  priest 
of  Nemi,  torn  hourly  by  fear  of  the  supplanter, 
who  shall  creep  through  the  grove,  and  cut  the. 
golden    bough,    and   take   the   priesthood   at 


The 
recipe  of 
fernseed. 


i3° 


SIRENI C A 


The 
recipe  of 
fern  seed. 


The 

shadow 

of  the 

Abiding. 


the  point  of  the  sword.  It  does  not  listen  in 
an  anguish  for  the  footstep  of  the  challenger, 
or  by  a  sick  fancy  call  down  defeat  out  of  the 
void.  It  never  knows  the  dwindling  of  men's 
applause  and  slow  withdrawal  of  favour,  feared 
as  a  woman  fears  the  loss  of  an  acclaimed 
beauty,  and  defended,  as  she  defends,  by 
pathetic  artifices  of  self-deception,  until  some 
quick  brutality  of  chance  tells  that  all  was  done 
in  vain.  They  who  have  never  known  praise 
are  spared  this  sadness ;  on  this  stage  they  were 
not  engaged ;  they  do  not  hang  upon  an  audi- 
ence or  watch  their  fortunes  cruelly  tossed  upon 
a  sea  of  faces. 

The  Roman,  tired  of  the  city,  with  its  smoke 
and  din,  and  the  oppression  of  all  its  riches,  pre- 
pared for  himself  a  place  of  refuge  in  the 
country  where  he  might  hear  the  fall  of  waters, 
and  look  out  upon  blue,  silent  mountains.  He 
lived  two  lives,  confessing  that  neither  might 
satisfy  his  nature ;  his  wheels  devoured  the  road 
between  town  and  country,  bearing  him  at  the 
headlong  speed  which  alone  could  assuage  his 
fever.     The  Sirens'  liegeman,  when  the  hard 


SIRENIC A 


131 


world  oppresses,  escapes  into  a  refuge  more 
sure  than  Tusculan  villa  or  Sabine  farm,  whence 
the  eye  ranges  over  a  vaster  distance  to  heights 
more  arduous  than  Soracte:  The  life  of  man, 
it  has  been  said,  has  many  lurking-coigns  and 
deep  recesses ;  more  often  than  we  know  it  is 
doubly  lived  by  seeming  simple  men,  because 
the  Sirens  have  come  unawares  and  changed 
them  wholly.  The  character  that  we  deemed 
transparent  is  made  impenetrable ;  parents 
grow  opaque  to  children,  husband  to  wife,  and 
friend  to  friend.  They  fashion  to  themselves 
deep  secrets  which  the  eyes  of  Argus  should 
never  find.  The  habitation  of  their  soul  is  as 
a  house  hung  with  concealing  tapestries,  and 
pierced  with  many  posterns  invisible  to  the 
stranger  or  even  the  guest ;  but  when  these  are 
gone,  the  arras  is  lifted  up,  a  stone  revolves  in 
the  wall,  and  the  wind  in  the  hidden  stairway 
calls  to  freedom.  When  others  think  that  a 
soul  lodged  after  this  wise  keeps  the  hearth, 
often  it  is  leagues  away,  on  seas  or  mountains 
or  in  the  forests  where  no  axe  has  ever  sounded. 
There  it  follows  things  fugitive  and  swift,  fleeter 


The 

shadow 

of  the 

Abiding. 


132 


SIRENICA 


The 

shadow 

of  the 

Abiding. 


than  hart  or  hare,  and  of  a  more  infinite 
endurance ;  there  it  tastes  the  proven  delight 
of  a  servitude  exchanged,  for  it  serves  still, 
but  now  aerial  and  winged  powers.  And  though 
the  wanderer  in  these  wild  places  may  lose  the 
comfortable  shelter  of  circumscription,  he  is  no 
more  encompassed  or  impounded ;  he  has 
leaped  the  enclosures  of  that  life  where  eyes  are 
focussed  to  one  length,  and  slow  to  perceive 
at  every  other.  It  may  be  peace  to  ignore 
immensity  and  dwell  within  a  fold ;  to  build  a 
sanctuary,  and  at  appointed  times  to  circumam- 
bulate its  walls  ;  to  leave  the  infinite  to  the  care 
of  sworn  interpreters.  Achievement  it  may  be  to 
saw  out  measured  lengths  of  fact,  and  with  dove- 
tail and  rebate  to  complete  the  cunning  joinery. 
But  those  have  been  once  allured  beyond  the 
workshop  and  the  chapel,  distrust  the  peace 
and  mislike  the  carpentry.  They  abstain  from 
the  deep  cups  of  induction  with  which  the 
world's  thirst  is  quenched.  "  It  is  brief,"  they 
say,  "this  little  nonce  of  life,  but  not  too  short 
for  brave  adventure.  Though  we  forsake  the 
sure  prospect,  who  shall  prove  it  madness  ? 


SIRENIC A 


i33 


For  who  shall  tell  us  which  is  best,  to  know  the 
transient  well,  or  to  follow  after  the  shadow  of 
the  abiding  ? " 

The  wanderer  knows  a  more  generous  wine 
than  the  thin  vintage  of  Abiezer ;  and  the  spice 
in  it  is  the  joy  of  truancy,  which  outlasts  the 
days  of  youth  and  is  inextinguishable  in  all  to 
whom  the  Sirens  have  ever  sung.  The  man 
remembers  with  delight  how  in  boyhood  he 
would  steal  afield  on  a  summer  night  to  chase 
moths  along  the  hedges,  exalted  under  the 
influence  of  the  bland  moonlight,  drawn  into 
mysterious  distances  by  a  charm  beyond  the 
vision  of  fluttering  wings  or  the  desire  of  a  diffi- 
cult prey.  How  the  great  moth  would  appear 
not  at  all,  or  only  under  a  waned  moon,  gleam- 
ing high  above  his  net,  and  never  for  his  seiz- 
ure ;  how  he  would  find  himself  far  from  home, 
when  the  night  began  to  fail  and  the  shadows 
under  the  boughs  gave  back  before  the  dawn  ; 
how  he  would  race  home  on  feet  drenched  with 
dews,  and  sleep  like  a  young  god  exhausted. 
A  mystery  breathes  to  him  still  out  of  those 
suave  nights,  so  vast,  so  delicately  haunted, 


Truancy. 


134 


SIRENIC A 


Truancy.  heavy  with  the  fragrance  of  the  meadow-sweet, 
with  the  whirr  and  subdued  murmur  of  soft 
wings ;  nights  of  the  dreamy  fields  and  silent 
paths,  when  the  pursuer  was  taken  himself  in  an 
enchantment,  and  winged  himself,  and  lifted 
up  to  an  unimaginable  rapture.  Somewhat  of 
that  joy  survives  to  all  who  are  held  in  the 
allegiance  of  the  Sirens ;  they  are  always  truant 
in  soul ;  through  the  long  days  they  may  obey 
the  punctualities  of  rule,  and  keep  the  statutes 
of  observance,  but  their  hearts  are  in  the  ghostly 
meadows  where  the  great  moth  hovered  and 
was  never  taken.  He  who  thus  outwardly  con- 
forms is  fast  vowed  to  errantry;  the  desire  of 
it  is  inveterate  in  him ;  for  the  secret  joy  of  it 
he  lives  aloof  in  a  seeming  poverty  of  affection. 
A  weak  competitor  for  all  solid  gains,  but  in 
the  retrospect  at  the  end  of  life  perhaps  in  bet- 
ter case  than  Amurath  the  Caliph,  who  in  age 
looked  back  on  a  career  of  royal  opportunity 
and  knew  but  fourteen  days  of  happiness.  The 
memories  of  those  great  escapes  shall  come  to 
him  in  the  still  chambers  where  he  sits  impris- 
oned ;  they  shall  not  find  him  mute  to  them, 


SI RENICA 


135 


but  like  a  violin  of  the  Amati,  he  shall  grow 
more  resonant  with  years,  and  at  the  end  take 
up  the  master-theme ;  it  shall  return  with  nobler 
harmonies ;  his  soul  shall  stir  to  its  departure 
upon  that  sound. 


Truancy. 


IX 


No  god  is  dead  who  ever  won  an  enduring 
worship.  Evil  or  good,  mild  or  terrible,  all  must 
live  on  ;  it  is  not  given  them  to  die.  The  timid 
pagan  erred  who  told  of  a  voice  over  the  waters 
crying:  "Great  Pan  is  dead."  Hephaestus  forges 
dread  arms ;  Athena  governs ;  Aphrodite  roams 
the  world,  and  Our  Lady  of  the  Wild  Creatures. 
And  the  nature  which  is  half  divine  is  also 
immortal ;  Herakles  girds  to  new  labours ; 
Prometheus  toils  for  men  ;  the  Muses  are  still 
present  deities.  Let  none,  therefore,  wonder 
that  the  ancient  enemies  of  the  Nine  live  also  ; 
for  if  Pan  signifies  all  nature,  the  Muses  and 
the  Sirens  together  mean  all  art,  and  the  Sirens 
alone  romance.  And  therefore  policy  has  feared 
them,  and  all  the  deedful  and  strenuous  ener- 


No  more 

dead  than 

Pan. 


136 


SIRENICA 


No  more 

dead  than 

Pan. 


gies  have  rallied  for  their  undoing.  Philoso- 
phers have  preached  and  good  men  practised 
to  compass  their  destruction.  Religion  has 
been  fain  to  save  their  victims  from  themselves 
with  the  murmur  of  her  liturgies.  And  yet  they 
are  not  silenced,  nor  are  their  victims  saved. 
For  all  who  have  heard  the  song  to  its  end  are 
marked  for  wanderings  as  surely  as  the  returned 
Odysseus,  who  visited  the  temples,  and  per- 
formed his  vows,  but  was  none  the  less  in 
jeopardy  for  all  his  offerings,  and  died  search- 
ing he  knew  not  what  in  the  peril  of  the  outer 
seas.  It  may  be  that  in  comparison  with  the 
great  gods  of  War  and  Love  and  Wealth,  the 
Sirens  are  weak  in  retinue;  but  where  once 
their  dart  flies  home  it  wounds  perdurably,  and 
the  weapon  of  Eros  is  a  child's  bow  to  theirs. 
They  spread  before  all  eyes  the  royal  colour 
they  love,  the  hue  of  the  great  distances  and 
the  deep  skies  ;  it  passes  into  the  texture  of  life, 
and  like  the  dye  which  the  great  waters  might 
not  wash  out,  it  holds  ineradicable  to  the  end. 
And  if  their  voice  was  full  of  peril  in  the  youth 
of  the  world,  how  fatally  resistless  now,  when 


S  I  R  E  N  I  C  A 


J37 


they  have  added  to  the  old  spell  new  charms 
drawn  from  all  experience  and  the  subtlest  arts 
of  life,  until  it  become  the  arch-music,  binding 
the  soul  from  the  first  chords  with  enchainments 
of  perfect  sound.  What  things  were  dreamed  of 
Xanadu  or  stolen  from  the  heavens  for  Adonais, 
what  whispers  breathed  into  enchanted  flutes 
or  called  out  of  haunted  lands  for  Euryanthe, 
all  the  promises  which  man  has  overheard  in 
the  winds,  or  surprised  in  the  night-watches, 
these  they  have  engrafted  upon  their  own  and 
made  integral  with  the  former  sorcery.  Like  the 
hunter  who  slew  the  eagle  with  a  shaft  winged 
from  its  own  feather,  they  have  used  dreams  of 
men  for  the  wounding  of  human  kind.  Only 
the  child  of  the  gods,  the  divine  changeling  in 
the  cradle,  may  obey  their  call  and  approach  the 
vision,  and  yet  have  full  part  in  a  human  happi- 
ness. For  the  rest  there  is  but  the  swift  flash 
of  joy,  coming  from  the  darkness  and  return- 
ing to  it;  or  the  gleam  of  that  Intellectual 
Beauty  which  to  the  poet  was  as  the  music  of 
the  night-wind  over  the  strings  of  an  unfin- 
gered  lute. 


No  more 

dead  than 

Pan. 


138 


SIRENIC A 


The 

clouded 

fire. 


The  song  of  the  Sirens  is  sung  with  mastery : 
they  did  not  strive  with  the  Muses  in  vain. 
All  that  the  rhetorician  knows  they  know :  to 
magnify,  to  make  significant,  or  to  suppress, 
that  their  cause  may  always  seem  the  better. 
They  do  not  sing  of  the  drear  interludes 
between  sight  and  sight,  or  of  the  soul  out- 
stripped and  fallen  exhausted.  They  do  not  sing 
of  achievement  betraying  promise,  or  the 
misery  of  affinities  never  joined.  They  leave 
unsung  the  visions  that  blind,  and  the  darkness 
that  dismays ;  the  grief,  the  abandonment,  the 
slowly  murdering  silences.  They  veil  the  clear 
Hellenic  light  with  wreaths  of  magical  cloud. 
But  they  sing  the  glory  of  the  chase  in  enchanted 
forests  and  the  straining  to  the  quarry  over  the 
mountains  ;  of  adventure,  of  ascent,  of  soaring 
valiance,  of  Infinity  brought  to  man's  com- 
pass ;  of  time  and  space  annulled,  the  aeon  and 
the  moment  made  one ;  of  the  almightiness  of 
joy  approaching  the  splendour  of  tremendous 
thrones.  These  things  they  sing ;  and  whoso- 
ever shall  hear  out  their  song  shall  hate  as  they 
hate,  and  love  as  seems  good  to  them,  suffered 


SI RENICA 


i39 


only  to  hide  under  heaped  memories,  like  seeds 
beneath  dead  leaves,  the  little  after-thoughts 
and  treasons  which  they  have  not  deigned  to 
crush.  Their  bondman  shall  forsake  Pheidias 
for  Scopas ;  he  shall  ask  of  Shelley  the  tran- 
scending forms  which  Sophocles  saw  and 
renounced ;  he  shall  desire  above  that  which 
is  simple  and  august  and  still,  the  sonorous,  the 
moving,  and  the  richly  dyed  ;  he  shall  give  up 
his  soul  to  the  lure  of  divine  impossible  things. 
The  crystal  classic  thought  shall  satisfy  him  no 
more  ;  through  its  clear  shoals  he  shall  see  the 
natural  man  j  but  what  is  that  to  him  who  has 
looked  into  Eastern  rubies  and  discerned  his 
angel  there  ?  All  this  lucidity  is  false  to  him  ; 
it  is  barren  and  pale  ;  the  glow  and  the  wonder 
are  analysed  away.  It  is  his  punishment  and 
his  very  grievous  loss ;  for  whom  the  classic 
spirit  informs,  it  saves  for  happiness  ;  romance 
has  no  like  redemption.  But  the  colour,  and 
the  glow,  and  the  clouded  inward  fire  he  must 
have,  though  the  pure  line  of  beauty  perish 
under  his  eyes.  He  receives  in  place  of  the  clear 
good  the  inapprehensible  gift,  committing,  in 


The 

clouded 

fire. 


140 


SIRENIC A 


The 

clouded 

fire. 


the  sight  of  prudence,  an  ineffable  folly  of 
exchange.  But  what  if  the  clear  be  shallow, 
and  the  sharpest  facet  of  proof  the  most  arrant 
artifice  ;  if  your  precise,  trimmed  knowledge  be 
vain  as  lore  of  heraldry,  exact  in  forms  that 
never  were  ;  if  the  symbol  confessed,  the  aspira- 
tion, the  dream,  win  nearer  than  your  defi- 
nitions to  the  beating  heart  of  truth  ?  If  all 
that  is  drawn  from  penumbra  into  hard  light  is 
only  man's  convenient  fiction,  were  there  not 
some  consolation  then  for  the  exchange  which 
prudence  deems  so  mad  ?  If  the  Real  lives 
only  in  the  Vague,  should  not  the  Sirens  deserve 
praise  despite  their  cruelty,  singing  the  eternal 
truth,  and  the  terror  and  dread  joy  that  come  to 
the  soul  out  of  the  deeps  in  which  it  dwells  ? 
Such  doubt  is  ever  goading  him  and  all  his 
fellows  in  unrest.  And  whenever  a  prescience 
of  that  returning  song  begins  to  trouble  them, 
they  make  answer  to  all  who  in  compassion 
would  keep  them  from  the  way :  "  Let  us  alone," 
they  say ;  "  the  pansy  of  the  dune  is  more  to 
us  than  the  ranged  flowers  along  your  walls. 
We  must  go  far  where  the  hours  are  unimputed  ; 


SIRENIC A 


141 


we  must  be  harmed  of  light.  We  shall  soar  and 
fall ;  yet  we  shall  have  known  joy  of  ascent, 
and  nothing  shall  take  from  us  the  remem- 
brance. Say  no  more  that  this  ecstasy  is  against 
nature  ;  it  is  the  very  way  of  the  soul.  For  she 
was  never  wholly  of  the  creation  and  is  not  to 
be  contained  by  its  laws.  Hers  is  a  transcend- 
ing spirit  which  is  abused,  forever  constrained 
to  present  things.  And  she  is  not  least  faith- 
ful to  her  own  nature  when  she  disdains  to  be 
held  by  them,  passing  for  awhile  into  the  limit- 
less and  untempered,  out  of  which  she  came. 
Let  us  go,  then,  without  reproach  ;  a  permitted 
force  carries  beyond  your  happiness.  But  when 
we  return,  once  more  defeated,  we  will  again 
seek  to  do  your  pleasure  in  gratitude  for  your 
goodwill.  For  often  when  you  might  have 
turned  from  us  you  have  forgiven,  endeavour- 
ing to  make  us  share  that  which  you  deem  to 
be  the  greatest  good  for  men.  When  we  are 
released,  we  will  toil  with  the  most  patient, 
though  there  be  not  one  among  the  least  of  you 
but  shall  have  greater  satisfaction  of  his  labour. 
Only  suffer  us  always  to  look  for  the  sign  and 


The 

clouded 
fire. 


II 


142 


SIREN IC A 


The 

clouded 

fire. 


to  depart  upon  its  coming ;  for  when  the  mys- 
tical wind  stirs,  and  the  music  streams  into  these 
shadows,  then  we  must  rise  and  go,  though  all 
the  mercy  of  earth  were  put  forth  to  hold  us 
back." 


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